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The Pipers of the Market Place 
Richard Dehan 




; CV *'' A * 5 * ^ ' y 

The Pipers of the 
Market Place 


BY 

Richard Dehan 

Author of t( The Just Steward ” “The Dop Doctor/* 
“Between Two Thievesetc . 


New 



York 


George H. Doran Company 

\ c \%* 


wtxawiw* 


T73> 


~P^ 

1 


Copyright, 1924, 

By George H. Doran Company 



transfbb 

Bt Vt PUBLIC LIBBJJW 

flWTP T. lft, 1040 


The Pipers of the Market Place 
— B — 

Printed in the United States of America 



NOV 2 1 1024 



407146 


o roo^wUBV***** 






O 

ip 


To 

MARGARET KIRBY , MONICA CAROLAN 
and ETHEL BROWN 






V 


CONTENTS 


Book the First: 

ABOUT STEPHEN AND HIS MASTERPIECE, AND HOW THE 
SHADOW FELL. 


Book the Second: 

TIOW STEPHEN SAW THE MARKET PLACE AND FELL IN 
LOVE WITH A ROSE. 


Book the Third: 

HOW STEPHEN ROBBED A HOTHOUSE AND FORTUNE 
TURNED HER WHEEL . 


Book the Fourth: 

HOW TREACHERY TURNED THE TABLES AND LOVE WENT 
OUT AT THE DOOR, AND STEPHEN SHOULDERED HIS BUR¬ 
DEN, AND THE PIPERS PIPED NO MORE. 



i 


PAGE 

11 


61 


211 


275 













Book the First: 

ABOUT STEPHEN AND HIS MASTERPIECE, AND HOW 
THE SHADOW FELL 
















Book the First: about Stephen and his 

MASTERPIECE, AND HOW THE SHADOW 
FELL 


.1 

W HEN the son of Malvina Braby first became aware 
of the small individual who slept and waked, was 
washed and dressed, ate and drank and played about the 
floor, and was kissed or spanked according to his deserts, 
—as Me and I, and Stevey,—he asked his mother (ad¬ 
dressed by grown-up folks indifferently as ‘Malvina’ or 
‘Missus’ or ‘Mrs. Braby,’) the invariable question as to 
whence he, small Stephen, originally came from? and 
received the immemorial reply with reference to the Pars¬ 
ley-Bed. 

Upon which, a board having been placed across the 
threshold of the two-roomed cottage by the Tolley Farm 
wheatacres, to limit the explorations of a child who had 
recently found his feet, Stephen scaled this obstacle for 
the purpose of visiting the source of his origin, and, to 
his infinite relief—found no little brother there. 

It would have had to have been a boy, he knew, to 
despoil him of his kingdom, for Malvina, though she in¬ 
veighed against the shortcomings of mankind, held her 
tenderer sex in little estimation. 

“Maids be muckheaps,” she would say, in her broad 
West Midland dialect, tinctured as it came off Stephen’s 
tongue with less racy Hertfordshire. “Pretty or plain, 
’tis all the same—they be muckheaps every one on ’em! 
But, whether sturdy or rickety, squinny-eyed or well- 
favoured, a boy be a boy. Yo’ know where yo’ be when 
yo’ bring one into th’ world!” 

Honesty in Malvina’s nature flourished as did the herb 
ll 


12 The Pipers of the Market Place 

with the purple flowers in the coppice at the bottom of 
the garden. A promise made was held by her as sacred 
as a vow; a promise broken was a sin that might hardly 
be forgiven. She feared God, honoured the Queen, and 
never went to Church on Sundays, holding that the women 
went there to look at one another’s bonnets, and the men to 
look at the women, unless they went to sleep. That she 
owned no Sunday bonnet might have had something to do 
with her abstinence. She wore sunbonnets of print as a 
general rule or a wide-eaved covering of straw. 

The sunbonnet, or the wide-eaved bonnet of rough 
straw, she wore perched on the summit of the lofty head 
from which flowed down a wonderful sheaf of curls. The 
pale red-brown colour of Canada wheat, each lock retained 
its spirals without the adventitious aid of papers or of 
rags. She wound them round two wetted fingers when she 
combed out her tresses,—withdrew the fingers—and thus 
added another curl to the sheaf. There were eleven curls 
on one side of her head and thirteen upon the other, and 
Stephen drove her with these for reins when he attained 
the age to romp. 

Young Stephen thought himself lucky to have been 
found by Malvina in the parsley-bed. His admiration for 
his mother was boundless from his birth. For one thing, 
she was three times as big as any other boy’s mother; and 
a good deal bigger and stronger than the fathers of most < 
boys. 

You could climb her like a tree, and view the landscape 
from the top of her; and ride upon her shoulder, or swing 
from her powerful hand. When she was playfully dis¬ 
posed, she could throw you in the air and catch you; or 
bend the poker and straighten it again; or break stout 
clothes-line into bits as easily as threads. 

The necessity of earning her living and her boy’s, and 
paying Grower Grundall’s rent for their leaky thatch-roofed 
cottage (one living-room and an attic in a little garden- 
enclosure on the edge of the sixty-acre wheatfield, divided 
by a hedge and the width of the road from the Tolley 
Brook beyond), obliged young Stephen’s mother to be very 
often absent, with the front-door locked, and the rusty key 




About Stephen and His Masterpiece 13 

tucked away in a hole behind the rosebush that grew by 
the doorstep, and climbed as high as the roof. 

Malvina would be picking fruit in somebody’s garden 
or orchard, or gleaning in the cornfields if it were harvest¬ 
time. Or gathering twitch in the new-ploughed lands if 
it happened to be late autumn; or doing a day’s scouring 
at Tolley Hall Farm, or Tolley Hall, or the Rectory, or one 
of the gentry-houses at the upper end of the Green. 

But when she came home there were sunshine and love 
and laughter for Stevey. An apple or a cake in her pocket, 
a kiss on her mouth, which was deeply cut and had a humor¬ 
ous quirk at either corner, and a tale of the day’s hap¬ 
penings on the tip of her tongue. Told with such richly 
tickling comments, such by-play and droll imitations of 
the voices of various persons, that Stephen would wallow 
in ecstasies on the floor. . . . 

“What is your mother?” he was once asked by an in¬ 
quisitive black-clad stranger, Sunday School Teacher, or 
possibly the Rector's temporary Curate, or the Doctor’s 
Locatiner—the Doctor being on holiday at that vague place, 
the Seaside. . . . 

“My mother she’s a Masterpiece. That’s what she be!” 
said Stevey, the term being locally employed to convey a 
matchless excellence in man, woman, child or cow, draught- 
horse or bacon-pig. It was his crushing, invariable retort 
to a jeering song sung at him by certain of the coarser 
and more turbulent among the village school-children, when 
in the play-hour little Steve,—who had slipped between the 
meshes of the net of Elementary Education as it was 
possible to slip in those days,—would be seen scrabbling 
his naked toes in the dust, and gloating through the play¬ 
ground railings over the progress of some game of tag or 
marbles, conkers or peg-in-the-ring. 

This was the song, chanted to the immemorial No-tune, 
by the rural youth of Tollymead for Steve’s discomfiture: 

“Your Mother be a Gipsy 
(Tramping Tinker Gipsy!) 

Your Mother be a Gipsy, 

An’ your Da ha’ runned Away!” 


14 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

“He haven’t not runned away,—not my Da haven’t!” 
Stephen would declare on a repetition of the charge. 

“Ah—yah! That’s cos’ you ain’t got no Da at all!” 

“Yes, I ’ave got a Da, so there!” 

“Tell if you’ve ever seed him!” 

“No, I ain’t not never seen him.” 

“That’s cos’ you haven’t got ’im! Ain’t your Mother 
a Tinker Gipsy?” 

“My mother she’s a Masterpiece,” Stephen would as¬ 
sert. 

And he would enforce the assertion by throwing stones 
with a subtle twist his Masterpiece had taught him, which 
missiles, invariably reaching their mark, scattered his tor¬ 
mentors, and discouraged the idea of pursuit. 

It was long before he learned to connect the absence of 
a father with the tiny pipkin of earthenware containing 
a deposit of melted grease and a wick of twisted rag, that 
burned from dark till the blink of day on the sill of the 
front window, half a dozen inches below the part-raised 
blind. Without it, some one returning home might fumble 
for the gate in the paling, might stub a toe on the bricks 
of the path, or trip over the broken step that led to the 
door. Such things are used in convents, for the love of 
Holy Poverty, but Malvina knew nothing of convents, and 
her poverty was a proud, stern thing. 

Fisher-folk in Brittany use such lamps, but she had 
never heard of them. The little pipkin, therefore, was an 
expression of Malvina’s self. The nightly setting of it in 
the window may have become mechanical, but I prefer to 
regard it as a resolute act of faith. 

Once, being in an unusually sensitive mood, Stephen 
complained to his mother of this rankling deficiency in the 
article of a Da. Malvina, early home from work, was 
stooping over the fire, stirring the stew for dinner—she 
could make the most remarkable stews, with a swede and 
a scrap of bacon or salt pork, a handful of mushrooms, 
half a dozen ’taters and a couple of fowls’ heads, a bit of 
scrag-end from the butcher’s, or a stray young rabbit or 
leveret wired in their garden-patch. 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 15 

She had been stooping over the pot, stirring the stew 
upon the fire. . . . Now she drew herself to her great 
height and said in her deep, full tones: 

“Yo’, Steve, ha’ I ever welted yo’?” 

“Not to say welted,” Steve returned, after a moment’s 
cogitation. “A clip now and again, when I done wrong, 
you might ha’ fetched me.” 

“Well now, look see. I’ll welt yo’ proper and to-rights 
if yo’ talks about yo’r Father. Never yo’ mind no becall- 
ing o’ me. I be big enough an’ strong enough to take my 
own part, I reckons. Do yo’ hear?” 

“Ay.” 

“Then don’t yo’ forget. Here’s a bit more to remem¬ 
ber-” As she stood with th^ firelight on her face, the 

yellow of her streaming curls was transmuted into shadowy 
amber; and the topmost curves of her full chin, and the 
long deep channel of her upper lip, and the deep-cut cor¬ 
ners of her mouth, and the thick upper lids of her great 
grey eyes, and her high broad forehead above the brows, 
were all blocked out in shade. The bridge of her nose had 
a shadow like a butterfly perched just behind the tip, and 
the shadows of the great brass rings in her ears danced on 
her neck as she moved her head, and the dimple on her 
left cheek hardly showed, proving that Malvina was 
troubled, Stephen wondered why. “I be no Gipsy nor 
Tinker neither,” she went on in her mellow tones, “though 
I ha’ lived wi’ th’ Tinkers ’tis true;; and knowed many 
Gipsies, and worse folks be than they there Romanies as 
I reckons; for they are true to their own. Yo’ ha’ heard 
o’ the Coal and Iron Country up North, .to Staffordshire ?” 
Steve nodded, and she went on, “Well, I wer’ bred and 
bom there—over to Leckley-way.” 

She stretched to stir the bubbling pot and went on 
speaking: 

“My Father he smithied Nails of all sorts, and so did my 
poor Mother; and as soon as I wer’ able for to sort and 
gross Nails, I sorted and I grossed ’em; and when my 
Father were over wi’ Hammering Nails,—him being the 
biggest and strongest man as ever I set eyes on, an’ always 
in Liquor, he Hammered my mother and me. An’ after 



16 The Pipers of the Market Place 

she died—for he Hammered her once too often I reckons! 
—I runned away to a woman which had been kind to me. 
She an’ her husband bein’ travellin’ hawkers, as wer’ 
cornin’ down-along from th’ Potteries; wi’ a van-load o 
chaney an’ stone-ware an’ earthenpots an’ pans.” 

“Same as the swag-barrer men and women what comes 
here, Fair time?” 

“Somethin’ the same, but more respectabler. That 
lady and gentleman on the chimley-piece as I sets such 
store by”—Malvina nodded gravely at a china mug, bear¬ 
ing the gilt legend ‘A Present For A Good Girl’ together 
with a bride and bridegroom in multi-coloured garments, 
walking arm-in-arm up a brilliantly green pathway in the 
direction of a vermilion Church—“were give me by the 
woman—the first present I ever had, I reckon. An’ the 
plate wi’ the pink rose on it as yo’ be so mortal fond of. 
She give me that ’un too.” 

Stephen’s eyes went to the corner cupboard, behind the 
glass of which were treasures. Namely, a pair of crockery 
spaniels with red and yellow collars, some glittering lustre 
‘vawses,’ a pair of old blue Delft candlesticks, and two 
plates of white stone-ware, one displaying in vivid colours 
a half-length portrait of the Duke of Wellington, while the 
other bore the presentment of a fully blown pink rose. 
Now to Stephen, that worshipper of flowers, the rose was 
the darling. There were many gardens in and about the 
neighbourhood of Tolleymead, both of the private and the 
market-supplying sort. And Covent Garden Market was 
the bourne of Stephen’s wishes, the point towards which 
his being turned as the needle to the Pole. 

When he dreamed of Covent Garden—which he did 
awake and sleeping!—he heard a thin sweet piping, and 
voices calling him. The voices were the voices of innumer¬ 
able millions of flowers, and the music was their music, 
blown from the trumpets of their petals, fiddled by their 
slender anthers on their bases’ tiny strings. 

Stephen’s ambition (unless when it veered towards salt 
water and a life of adventure) was to be a Market-gardener, 
and grow flowers the whole year round. Hothouse forced 
or greenhouse reared, or outdoor-grown in summer, in 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece IT 

beds as big as croquet-lawns, in gardens bigger than fields. 
He would grow rich by selling flowers, though seeing your 
bright-faced children dispersed in strangers’ clutches must 
hurt, it seemed to him. But when you used the money to 
buy more land for market-gardening, and grow even 
grander and lovelier flowers- Oh, only wait a bit! . . . 

Steve had lapsed into dreaming of the Market while his 
mother still talked of Mrs. Casgey: 

“She schooled me to read and spell a bit out o’ th’ Good 
Book there on the shelf.” (A dumpy copy of the Bible 
kept with Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress on a green wool 
mat, covered from the dust with a thread-lace handker¬ 
chief.) “Th’ same as I learned yo’ yo’r letters in—and 
she taught me th’ prayers I’s taught yo’.” 

“ 'Our Father’ an’ th’ other one, ’bout Matthew, Mark, 
Luke an’ John?” inquired Stephen, coming back to the 
world of every day. 

“Ay—an’ when I’d bin with ’em four years—I were 
ten year old when I joined ’em,—Mr. Casgey—the kind 
woman’s husband,—he teached me to use my Hands. He 
were a smart-like, active man, dressing uncommon slap-up, 
an’ proper clever wi’ his mauleys—an’ when there was 
Purses put up for Fights at Fairs, and Wakes, and such¬ 
like, he’d pitch his hat into the Ring, an’ step in after, an’ 
more often than not—he’d carry off the Purse! So—me 
being wonderful big and strong for fourteen, an’ gettin’ 
bigger; and beginnin’ to have trouble wi’ men-folk about 
my Looks an’ such; I found what Mr. Casgey called Scien¬ 
tific Hammering useful.” She reached out a massive arm 
and stirred the stew again, adding: “Then, an’ many a 
time since. Eh, the men!” 

Upon this, a characteristic ejaculation of Malvina’s in 
moments of wonder or perplexity at the bewildering nature 
of the vagaries displayed by the dominant male, she shut 
her lips resolutely, and went on stirring. The firelight 
seemed to reflect itself in eyes that did not see it. The 
rafters and walls had stopped echoing when she had left 
off speaking, and there was so long a period of unbroken 
silence that Steve wriggled in agony upon his three-legged 
wooden stool. 


18 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Bain’t there no more on it?” he asked, with a gloomy 
sense of injury; his mother seemed to have drifted so very 
far away. . . . 

“She took ill,” said his mother, “one sickly autumn— 
meaning Mrs. Casgey as had bin so true to me. We was 
at Tot’nam High Cross, an’ for days an’ days I nursed her, 
having a love of ’tending to sick folks at all times. ^ But 
she got no better, an’ they carried her off to Tot’nam 
Infirmary, the Doctor as we’d called to her saying ’twas 
a Fever Case. And there she died—me never being let in 
to see her, nor do nothing whatsumever for her—an’ there 
she was buried, in the poor part of Tot’nam High Cross 
Churchyard. And me being rising seventeen—when we 
got back from th’ Funeral—her husband offers to Marry 
me an’ take me on th’ road. Til do the Square Thing by 
yo’, Malvina,’ he says to me, ‘and expect yo’ to be properly 
Grateful. There’s no use cryin’ over Spilt Milk. She’s 
gone, as were a good ’un,’ he says, ‘an’ won’t come back 
agen. So give us a kiss, or a couple of ’em to start with, 
—an’ as soon as may be managed we’ll go afore a Croaker 
—being Flash patter for a Parson—an’ be regularly mar¬ 
ried wi’ th’ old gal’s ring!’ Eh, the men! . . 

Whenever she had stirred the pot her shadow had mim¬ 
icked the action with an arm as long as a clothes-prop 
on the whitewashed wall behind. Now as she lifted a 
clenched hand, the shadow lifted another, that brandished 
on the ceiling in a very menacing way. 

“He’d had a sup too much o’ drink, I’ll try an’ believe 
it on him, as had bin in his way a good friend to me and a 
good husband to her. Or—maybe he wer’ like other men; 
an’ she covered up th’ worst on him, an’ hid a sore heart 
wi’ a smiling face, as women learn to do! But she’d bin 
like a true mother to me,—an’ that talk of our getting 
Married—an’ her not a day laid in the ground, an’ the sight 
o’ the poor soul’s ring. . . . Someways it went to my head 
like drink—not as I’d ever took none!—an’ I up wi’ my 
mauleys as he’d taught me how—an’ I reckon I Hammered 
him!” 

At this point Stephen snickered joyously, for the hoist- 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 19 

ing of Mr. Casgey by his own petard had exquisite relish 
for him: 

‘‘You give him a proper Bloody Nose, an’ a couple in 
the Bread-Basket ?” 

“I bloodied his Nose, for certain sure, an’ give him two 
Mourning Peepers. An’ I may ha’ rattled his ribs a bit— 
but No hitting below the belt. Tisn’t anyways sporting 
nor workmanlike.” 

“O! Then wot happened?” 

“I took my bundle an’ went away, an’ that’s how I 
come to join th’ Tinkers. Irish they was, an’ not overly 
clean, an’ the men drank hard, though the women was 
God-fearing an’ respectable. And I’d made up my mind 
to quit company the day before the day I saw yo’r Father 
at Marnet Fair.” 

“Tell about him!” 

“No more than this, as fits yo’ to remember, my promise 
always holding good to Hammer yo’ if yo’ talk.” 

Her broad bosom heaved with the deep breath she drew, 
under its rough brown wincey covering; the dancing fire¬ 
light showed a pulse that throbbed in the hollow at the 
base of her throat, as she turned great eyes upon her son; 
and said to him, sternly now: 

“Get yo’ off’n that ther’ stool, and hark to me yo’r 
mother. Yo’r Father he were treated bad by his own flesh 
and blood. Slighted from his birth, he were, for little or 
no reason, an’ money and land that by rights wer’ his, 
Willed away to folks no Kin. Then there were a quarrel, 
an’ yo’r Father he went away to the London Courts of 
Chancery, to get the Man on th’ Woolsack to gi’ some o’ 
th’ money to him. He’d promised me—yo’r Father had— 
as niver would he touch it, but he let the thought on it 
work on him, an’ were ’tangled and tolled away. Thirteen 
year ago. He come back to me at Christmas-tide, and 
once after that he come again—since when never no more 
ha’ I set eyes on him! Two chil’ren they’d died; Wilfrid 
my first”—(it gave Steve a startling shock to hear that he 
had had a brother)—“an’ another boy as breathed but 
twicet after he were born, poor thing! I reckon as I had 


20 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Fretted a bit that time, wi’ one thing an’ another. . . . 
Since when I ha’ Done wi’ Fretting, even when the Savings 
in the Bank went to keep yo’r Father in London; and this 
Cottage and the bit o’ land that Mrs. Parmint left him, 
being her Nurseling as she said—and dearer to her than 
any—failed into other hands, Money being raised on ’em, 
—since when I ha’ been paying Rent to the Grower, 
Lawyer Grundall’s Son. Do yo’ hear me plain, yo 
Steve ?” 

“I hears you, mother.” 

‘‘Now yo’ knows pretty nigh as much as me. Mind and 
remember, for after this once speaking, I’ll speak of it no 
more! An’ yo’ll remember this, yo’ will,—yo’r Father’s 
no ways blameable. Th’ money he tried to git hold o’ wer’ 
his by right an’ law. An’ though he broke his word to 
me, I as be his wife ha’ forgi’en him, an’ none^ can call 
him to account for wrong he did to me. An’ I have 
heard, from folks that knows,—as there are hundreds at 
they Courts of Chancery up to London—women and men, 
young and old, with loving friends a-waiting,—and them 
as are nearer even than friends—that have been Drawn in 
like to yo’r Father was—and can no more get free again 
than flies in a Spider’s web! And he’s got that nature in 
his blood as gold or goods he have a right to, he’d rather 
see ’em flung away than make an enemy rich. If he must 
lose the ship—he’ll choose to burn the ship to th’ water, 
afore he’ll see her pass away into a stranger’s hands! We’ll 
talk o’ this no more now! As for they youngsters up vil¬ 
lage, what they should have is a Hammering. Pick out 
the biggest of ’em next time, and go in, an’ Hammer him 
sound. I’ll learn yo’ how. Stand now, and put up yo’r 
dooks—double yo’r thumbs well over. Keep yo’r left 
shoulder back,—hit out as hard as you like—yo’ll never 
get nigh o’ me!” 

So Steve got off his three-legged stool, and there and 
then received the first of many subsequent lessons in the 
noble science of Fisticuffs—and by and by fell upon the 
biggest of his tormentors, and duly Hammered him. 
Trouble with the children of Tolleymead being much 
lessened by this process (though occasional comments from 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 21 

their parents and friends with reference to the fashion 
of Stephen’s hair and clothes could not be checked in this 
fashion), the eleventh autumn of the boy’s life was the 
happiest he had ever known. Who had known nothing 
but happiness, until across the threshold of the cottage 
fell the wavering unsteady shadow of the man whom 
Stephen named The Enemy.’ 


2 

The Shadow fell in the last days of November, 1870, a 
month of rain-laden south-west gales. In London (not 
so far away) the Michaelmas Law Term had been born and 
had expired, 1 to the sobbing of the gusty wind and the 
grey skies’ sooty weeping, and the hard-won silver stored 
away by Malvina in the box in the bed-frame had gone 
to pay the Michaelmas rent. 

Here on the edge of the Middlesex clay the harvest had 
been cut and carried in blinks of watery sunshine, inter¬ 
spersed with downpours that tinged the stubbles prema¬ 
turely with unwholesome green. Plough-horses bogged in 
the furrow; fired haystacks, belching thick black smoke, 
called out the Parish engines; and sprouted ricks in farm¬ 
ers’ yards aped verdant porcupines. 

Near the end of a drizzly day, blurry with fog that tan¬ 
gled in trees, copses, and hedgerows, and lay in grey 
blankets on the fields, and clung to the beards and clothes 
of men, and covered the surfaces of chairs, tables, settles 
and window-panes with an unpleasant, clammy kind of 
bloom, young Stevey was up village in the tap of The 
Pure Drop’ tavern, a resort which held a charm for him 
beyond the ‘Spotted Dog.’ 

The Spotted Dog’ was near the School on the road 
running west by the Rectory grounds, and eastward past 
the Tally-Ho Coach-office, to join the Great North Road. 
It called itself an Inn, and had a Coffee-Room, and a 
Billiard-Room, and a Bottle and Jug Department, and a 
Bar instead of a tap. But The Pure Drop’ stood on the 

1 Until the Amendment Act of 1830 passed in 1873, the Michaelmas 
Law Term began November 2nd, and ended November 25th. 


22 The Pipers of the Market Place 

northern edge of the Green (on the east side of which runs 
the Tolley Brook), looking over Hendon, Finchley and 
Highgate—and the wooded scarps of Hampstead, to a 
bluish-dun haze in the south and east, that meant the in¬ 
numerable chimneys of the City of young Stevey’s dreams 
—Whittington’s London Town. 

The tap of ‘The Pure Drop’ had once been the hall of 
a Grange or Manor-house, in the days when ruffed Tudor 
sovereigns (with an eye to wealthy abbeys and convents 
with sacristy cupboards rich in jewelled copes and chal¬ 
ices) made stately Progresses through happy Hertford¬ 
shire. It had a vast stone-hooded hearth, where a timorous 
little fire of sticks shuddered between huge dog-irons, and 
its stone-flagged floor ran steeply downhill opposite the 
counter-end. Not a polished mahogany counter with a 
barmaid behind it, and a row of brass-mounted beer-pulls 
such as the ‘Spotted Dog’ could show; but a kind of dusty 
carved wooden cave that had once been a Buttery-Hatch, 
lighted by a hanging oil-lamp, cousin to the one that dimly 
burned behind the fanlight over the door. Pewter meas¬ 
ures, and crockery jugs and mugs were ranged on shelves 
in this cavern, or hung from nails driven into the wormy 
panelling. And in the dusk at the back of the cave lurked 
a row of—not barrels of porter, ale and beer, as growm 
folks foolishly imagined, mounted on clumsy timber baulks 
—but awful formless monsters, pretending to be asleep, 
while waiting to pounce on unwary boys. . . . 

For sometimes this dusky, dampish place—with its 
sanded floor all slanting, and worn by the tread of cen¬ 
turies into hollows here and there—was for Stephen a 
desert island inhabited by these horrors. At other times 
it was the Cave of a band of hardy Sea Rovers, who owned 
Stephen as their Captain and knew no law but his. 

His private library (Malvina had taught him to spell 
out of her big-print Bible—the only book she had ever 
read, with the exception of The Pilgrim's Progress )—his 
private library, kept in a hole where three bricks had come 
out of the chimney-side of the cottage by the wheatacres, 
comprised a tattered volume of Aitken’s Arctic Voyages, 
a Robinson Crusoe, the First Abridg’d, with the smudgy 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 23 

little black woodcuts, and a Garden Lovers' Manual and 
Horticultural Almanac, with gaudy-coloured flower-plates, 
for the year 1811. Lastly a battered copy, printed at 
New Orleans in 1800, of the Lives, Exploits, Robberies and 
Cruelties of Celebrated Buccaneers and Sea Rovers, With 
Certain Adventures of Freebooters, Brigands, and Slave- 
Hunters by Land. 

The books Stephen somehow knew had belonged to his 
father. An inscription in laborious roundhand at the top 
of the title-page of Robinson Crusoe said it was: 

'A Preasn to My Mr Wilfrid on His 8t 
Berthday. From his Afexn Nurse 

'Susan Parmint. 

‘4 Sepr 1841/ 

The Lives, Exploits and Cruelties had the autograph 
‘Geoffrey Braby,’ in faded writing, neat and small, over 
the date ‘1810/ Without quite knowing how he knew, 
Stephen understood Geoffrey Braby to have been his 
father’s father; dead and buried years before he, Stephen, 
had been born. 

The Garden Lovers' Manual and the Lives, Exploits and 
Cruelties were more dog’s-eared and thumb-marked than 
Crusoe and the other book. There were times when Stephen 
wavered between the career of a Market Gardener and the 
life of a Sea Rover, as described in the Exploits and 
Cruelties, which had a salty smell. The aroma of old cigar- 
smoke still exhaled from its yellow pages, their corners 
dog’s-eared here and there to mark favourite chapters, 
particularly those descriptive of the plundering of treasure- 
ships at sea. 

The Garden Lovers' Manual had belonged to ‘Amelia 
Braby,’ who had written inside the cover in a tremulous 
Italian hand: ‘To Susan Parmint, my Dear Friend.’ 
‘Easter 1832’ was added a little lower down, in those 
wavering, delicate characters. The gift to Susan had been 
made, Stephen realised many years later, before his father 
Wilfrid had seen the light of an unfriendly world. And 
Susan, who had nursed Stephen’s grandmother, had reared 


24 The Pipers of the Market Place 

her weakly baby. How much better it might have been 
for him, if honest Susan had failed! 

But Susan had faithfully performed her task, and had 
left her bit of freehold, a living-room and a garret under 
the thatch, to Stephen’s father when she died. Stephen 
visualized her as a tallish, spare, active old woman of 
seventy, with bright black eyes looking from the eaves of 
a quilted green cotton sunbonnet, a brown print gown 
speckled with white, turned up over a drugget petticoat 
and tucked through the placket, a blue-checked apron on 
week-days, and a black silk one for Sundays, worn in con¬ 
junction with a black net cap, with bristling purple bows. 
And this vision of Mrs. Susan Parmint was inseparable 
from the horrifying idea that instead of being properly 
buried in Tolleymead Churchyard, Mrs. Parmint, in her 
habit as she had lived, had been shut up inside the clock, 
an ancient timepiece of grandfather type that stood in a 
corner of the living-room, displaying in the left top corner 
of its square brass face a ship in full sail over extremely 
green waves, and a half-moon on the right. These mystic 
symbols being supposed, when certain machinery behind 
should once be set a-going, to indicate the times of the 
tides, and the planet’s wax and wane. 

The company assembled in the tap of The Pure Drop’ 
on this dripping Monday evening comprised no members 
of the fairer sex, the washing keeping these at home. 
Rumbold, the wheelwright, a long-limbed man, robust and 
hale and powerful still, though some years over seventy, 
and with a face that might have been hewn from seasoned 
mahogany, sat with two other veterans on the high-backed 
oak settle near the hearthplace, wearing his usual working 
clothes, tight-gaitered pantaloons, single-breasted vest of 
tough corduroy, and a high-collared brass-buttoned body- 
coat of coarse blue cloth. A decent cravat of black silk 
being wound about his collarless throat, and tied in a 
strangle-knot, its long ends straggling loosely over the clean 
white Sunday shirt. 

Mr. Wix, the head-gardener from Tolley Hall, in virtue 
of his social status, occupied a Windsor elbow-chair facing 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 25 

the meagre little fire that languished in the great fireplace. 
Whichello, the Rector’s clerk, gardener and coachman com¬ 
bined, sat on a rush-bottomed chair in the corner opposite 
the settle, while Haybitt, the by-way-of-butcher, Dotsoe, a 
crippled cobbler, Thickbroom, the proprietor of the chan¬ 
dler’s shop, and a scattering of workmen and field-labour¬ 
ers, sat on the benches by the walls, or stood about with 
widespread legs, chatting in thick, slow voices, or leaned 
against the zinc-covered board that served as the tap 
counter, occasionally contributing a nod or grunt to the fund 
of village talk. 

While straying amongst the wet legs of The Pure 
Drop’s’ patrons,—as little noticed by them as some owner¬ 
less pup—you are to see a bright-eyed urchin of something 
over eleven, with yellow curls dangling over a clean white 
‘hunkumed’ smock. 

Breeches and leggings underneath the smock (‘hunkumed’ 
being local for ‘honeycombed’) might have been taken for 
granted, or knickers and yarn half-stockings, ending in 
clump-soled boots. But Stephen’s lanky, naked legs pro¬ 
jected from the coy shelter of a frock of coarse red flannel, 
its barrel-body fastened behind by flat white discs of bone. 

As regards Stephen’s feet, which were huge for his size, 
they went naked, winter and summer. Upon the matrons 
of Tolleymead, the effect of the curls, petticoats and legs 
combined, was somewhat neutralized by familiarity, the 
subject having developed inch by inch, under their scan¬ 
dalized eyes. But they still said he were heathenish, and 
it gave you a fair turn to look at him,—whenever they had 
time to look. 

Upon strangers visiting Tolleymead, the first casual sight 
of Stephen—pointed out as a local landmark—took effect 
in various ways. Males whistled shrilly before becoming 
personal. Females, if young, giggled, and if elderly, 
screwed up their lips, or gasped out: ‘Gracious!’ Gener¬ 
ally, when these recovered breath, they said that some one 
ought to speak to that boy’s mother. Pursuing this idea, 
and growing warm—in proportion to the tepidity of folks 
who knew the aforesaid mother—they asserted a determina¬ 
tion to speak to her themselves. Upon which, or at the 


26 The Pipers of the Market Place 

earliest chance, Malvina was pointed out to them. They 
could see her coming from a long way off, and the bigger 
she loomed upon the view, the less acute became their de¬ 
sire to pursue the unequal combat. The boy belonged to 
her after all, they admitted at this juncture, and hers was 
the right to dress him up like a Guy Fawkes if she chose. 

‘The Pure Drop’ stood on the northern corner of Tolley- 
mead Goose Green, and thus whenever solitary play began 
to pall on Stephen, he would watch for the moment when 
the taproom door swung inwards at the entrance of a cus¬ 
tomer, to snatch on the skyline south and east, between 
clumps of woods long-vanished now, and brooding banks 
of fog or haze (or as to-night, dark thunderous clouds, 
with the last reflections from the sunset-fires that had all 
faded from the west smouldering out behind them), a 
glimpse of the city of his dreams. . . . 

London.—Where Queen Victoria lived, and the Prince 
of Wales and the Princess. . . . His Worship the Lord 
Mayor, Sir Edwin as made the Lions, Mr. Calcraft, what 
Hanged you, if you deserved it, Mr. Spurgeon who 
Preached the Sermons, Cockle as made the Pills, and Boz 
as made ‘Pickwick/ and what that meant Stephen wasn't 
overly certain. Only his name was jolly rum—and that 
when word came he was dead, some months back in the 
Summer, Mr. Wix, the head-gardener from Tolley Hall, 
had looked uncommon solemn, and said such a death was 
nothing less than a National Calamity. 

London.—Where there was live Lions and Tigers in a 
Sewerlogical Gardens. Shops and theaytres beautiful to 
behold. Also Hashley’s Circus, not to speak of the Mar¬ 
kets. Smithfield where the Cattle went to be killed,— 
Stratford and Spitalfields, The Borough, and Covent Gar¬ 
den Market, best, biggest and beautifullest of all. 

Stephen left Covent Garden last, because of the thrill 
it brought him. The thin sweet music of the flowers began 
to pipe and trill. There was nothing at all in Sea Roving 
when those tiny voices called to him: “Grow up and be a 
Gardener, Stephen Braby! Love us better than others 
love, and we will give you more!” 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 27 

At such times nothing was more sure than that Steve 
would belong to the flowers, though in the vicinity of Mr. 
Wix, Market Gardeners paled. Wix dressed the part of a 
Country House Head-gardener very attractively, in a tall 
shaggy hat with a yellow silk handkerchief stowed away 
inside it, a light checked suit, made very tight, Wellington 
boots being worn over the pants in wet weather,—and 
carried a silver watch so large that consulting it required 
art. 

To be such a man, and wear such a hat, such a suit of 
checks and such Wellingtons, and stroll about the gardens 
on a pleasant autumn day, digging out Stocks for Stan¬ 
dards with a bright steel spade, or taking Cuttings with a 
specially sharp penknife; or mixing Soils for seedlings on 
a board in the Potting Shed—that would be a life! Steve 
wondered if the flowers piped for the Tolley Hall head- 
gardener? And a long way down inside him he felt sure 
that they did not. 

The heavy latch clashed up and down, and the door 
swung open or shut to behind clients coming and going. 

. . . London was now a huge formless blur on the wet 
horizon, with banks of lowering blue-black cloud piled tier 
on tier above her, and streaks of greenish livid light oozing 
and creeping through. Thunder muttered at intervals 
faintly in the distance, though Stephen had heard that 
muttering when the nights were dry and fine. There it 
came again now,—that curious throb—throb—throb- 
bing . . . 

The door clashed-to in Stephen’s face and shut out Lon¬ 
don. An evil whiff assailed his nose, a smell of Dirt and 
Poverty—mingled with a fiery spirituous reek. And some¬ 
body stumbled against him, heavily trod on his naked toes 
and swore at him savagely; and thrust him aside roughly, 
so that he nearly fell. 

A miserable, squalid figure in a thin, dilapidated over¬ 
coat, the wraith of a muffler wound about its neck, and 
on a shaggy unkempt head an old felt hat so greasy that 
it shed off the rain in streams. A coughing Tramp, muddy 
to the eyes, with broken boots oozing water and mud 
through divers gaping cracks in them. With a heavy stick 


28 The Pipers of the Market Place 

in his bony yellow hand, and the wreck of a gaudy carpet¬ 
bag slung about his stooping shoulders by a frayed piece of 
cord. 

Behind his evil-smelling back as he thrust forward to the 
tap-counter, Stephen stuck out his tongue and cocked a 
snook, because of his aching toes; and then forgot those 
members and the man who had trodden on them, hearing 
Mr. Wix the gardener from the Hall explaining to Wheel¬ 
wright Rumbold that the sound that had puzzled Stephen 
so all through the summer and autumn, wasn’t thunder as 
people thought,—but Cannon being Shot Off, over across 
the Channel, where Bloody War was a-going on, between 
the Germans and the French. 

3 

As the head-gardener from Tolley Hall made this amaz¬ 
ing statement—taking a stout pale cigar with a gilded waist¬ 
band round it (called a ‘Pickwick’ and choice at three¬ 
pence) from a special box kept on a shelf,—men standing 
in the now crowded place turned to stare at the speaker. 
And the simultaneous shifting of their feet upon the tap- 
room flagstones sounded like the backwash of a wave that 
has flopped into the mouth of a cavern, carrying with it 
back to the sea shingle and sand and weed. 

Stephen had never seen the sea (without which element 
there could be no splendid things like Sea Rovers), but 
he had read and dreamed of it; and this swirling, grating, 
scraping sound sent thrills from his scalp down his spine. 
He held his breath, waiting for it to happen again, half 
loathing, half desirous. But nothing came but the husky 
voice of the landlord, Popplewell. 

“Marvels in Natur’ we know there are, and are grateful 
to eddicated gen’l’men—such as yourself, Mr. Wix, sir— 
for a tip now and agen. But when it come to hearing can¬ 
non fired in Foreign Parts, here to say in the Bosom of 
England, I ventur’ to hint, Mr. Wix, sir, as you’re having 
your little joke?” 

“Not—a—bit of it!” said Mr. Wix, a dapper, black- 
eyed, grizzled little man, and a red-hot Democrat. He 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 29 

spoke with breaks between the words imposed by sucks at 
the pale cigar, which drew but badly. Now he opened a 
horn-handled pocket-knife, and with the smallest, sharpest 
blade,—the one he used when Budding—he jabbed the 
cigar in a vital part, viciously again and again: “Cannon 
I said’’ (jab) “and Cannon I meant,” (jab) “big, middle- 
sized and (jab) “little; being shot off by men against 
their feller-men, (jab-jab) “Morning 1 , noon and night! 
And while rivers of blood are running and—” (jab) 
heads and arms and legs are flying—Here we sit, or stand 
at our liking—this Britain being a Free Country—a-tasting 
all the Blessings of Peace under a Moan-archical Constitoo- 
tion and a Liberal Government. Until the Nobs at White¬ 
hall and the Lords and Commons at Westminster take it 

into their Addled Heads-” 

Ear! ’ear!” called out one of several men present 
who worked in the gardens at the Hall. 

“You draw it mild, old Cocky-Wax!” growled Bendall 
the glazier, a master-man who employed Labour and could 
dispute with Mr. Wix on an equality, there being what was 
termed a deal of glass’ in the grounds of the neighbour¬ 
hood. 

“—Take it into their Addled Heads,” reiterated Mr. 
Wix obstinately, sticking the cigar in the corner of his 
mouth and striking a match on his leg, “to give Us a Taste 
of War. What of that there Two Million Vote to in¬ 
crease the Army in August?” 

# “Protectionary Measures,” growled the glazier, “Protec¬ 
tionary Measures and no More.” 

Mr. Wix sucked savagely at his cigar, which resolutely 
declined to kindle,—and before he could break out again, 
a deep bass voice spoke: 

“Being a plain, rough-cut man, wi’ no pretence to 
Schooling,” said the deep voice,—which was strong enough 
to fill the tap of The Pure Drop,’ though its owner had 
weathered the rains and snows of more than seventy years, 
—“and granting as Fighting is going on ’twixt French 
Frogs and German Sausages—not as I see much word of 
it in the Prints as come my way!—I ask why the evening’s 
armony should suffer on accounts of it?—seeing as how— 


30 The Pipers of the Market Place 

if War can be catched—the same as Mumps or Measles 
—and not disputing as it can,—we haven’t caught it 
yet!” 

“ ’Ear—’ear! Angcore!” cried a chorus of approving 
voices, and there was even some clapping of horny working 
hands. Infuriating Mr. Wix (whose temper had been 
soured by the perpetual demands of cooks for late peas 
and early asparagus)—to the extent of producing from the 
crown of his tall hat, where it companied with the yellow 
silk handkerchief, a tightly folded copy of the Herts Radi - 
cal Post . From which, taking his stand under the lamp 
that swung above the counter, he proceeded to read from 
the column headed ‘News From The Seat of Hostilities’ 
how Eleven French Towns, 3653 Guns, 155 Mitrailleuses, 
500,000 Chassepots, Nine Eagles and Standards, and Four 
Millions in Money had been taken by the Germans up to 
date. How a German Corps—pronounced by Mr. Wix as 
spelt—was then marching on Amiens and Rouen, and Five 
more surrounding Paris, with batteries ready to smash 
that city into heaps of brick and stone. 

“Suppose it this here Country’s case, you seven-and- 
seventy Sleepers!” cried Mr. Wix, lowering the newspa¬ 
per to glare about the tap. “Write Harwich and Dover 
down here ’stead of Amens and Rowing,—and London in¬ 
stead of Paris—and where would you be then?” 

“They putts a mortal lot o’ lies in they theer Daily 
Papers,” Thickbroom, the chandler, observed to Haybitt, the 
by-way-of-butcher, who only killed when the ultimate frag¬ 
ment of the last beast slain had found a buyer. “A mortal 
lot o’ lies they prints, to stuff the geese that buys ’em. As 
for they Five Hundred Thousand Chased Pots, they might 
be Brass or even Lead, or Tin, for all we knows of ’em. 
And when it comes to Corpses marching on the City of 
Paris—I don’t believe a word on it!—and so I tells you 
plain.” 

“ ’Ens may run round wi’out their ’eads,” the by-way- 
of-butcher responded* in a whisper, for his services were 
occasionally required on the Tolley Hall Home Farm. 
“And some beastes takes a sight more killin’ than others 
—me having been kicked across my own yard by a cow I’d 



About Stephen and His Masterpiece 31 

ha’ sworn were Beef. But Marching Corpses is a thing I 
never thought to hear of.” 

“Nor never will!” said the deep bass of Rumbold the 
wheelwright, who enjoyed a small monopoly in the under¬ 
taking line. “All a Corpse wants, poor helpless thing! 
is to be fit wi’ a decent coffin, an’ screwed down conform¬ 
able before ’tis laid away.” 

“Have you never heard of dead folks turning in their 
coffins?” 

The question came from the comer of a bench against 
the wall of the taproom, on the downhill side, unillumined 
by the feeble rays of the lamp. A stranger’s voice, not 
pleasant, being hollow, harsh and jarring; not a common 
voice, either, and possibly the worse for that. 

“Why Ay, I reckon, master, whoever you be as asks 
it,” returned the wheelwright, glancing over his shoulder 
towards the wall. “But I never put no faith in it.” 

“And you, Mister! Over there, with the newspaper!” 

This query being plainly intended to be answered by 
the Hall gardener, Mr. Wix with some reluctance replied 
in the affirmative. 

“ ‘Yes’ d’ye say?” went on the voice, broken by a hack¬ 
ing cough at intervals. “Well, there’s a paragraph or so in 
the Local Intelligence Column of the damned rag you’ve 
got there, will give you a reason why some coffins in this 
Churchyard of Tolleymead should heave and quake,—if 
they don’t split and give up their dead to-night!” 

“And why should the graves give up their dead?” asked 
the Rector’s clerk and handy-man, who, absorbed in his 
nightly game of cribbage with the little hump-backed crip¬ 
ple (who always beat him unmercifully), had not spoken 
or looked up before:—“them having been properly interred 
with the Church of England Service, Responses being de¬ 
livered, and all in a Orthodox way?” 

“Oh, stow your jaw!” snarled the savage voice with a 
gnashing kind of impatience, as its owner, who had been 
lying huddled on the bench in the shadows near the settle 
heaved himself up with some effort and dropped his ragged 
feet to the floor. As he stood up, scowling and shivering 
and clutching his dilapidated overcoat to drag it closer 


32 The Pipers of the Market Place 

round him, Stephen knew him for the man who had sworn 
at him and trodden on his toes. He plunged at the counter 
as he had previously done, scattering the groups of drink¬ 
ers, and threw down some copper coins on it, with a sordid, 
swaggering air: “Another four of rum here—and a drop 
of boiling water. Though blast me! if I want much more 
of that, being soaked to the very bones. Hdckrr! Damn 
the cough! Look alive, Missus!” 

“You’re in a hurry, seemingly ?” hinted the landlord, 
reaching down a squat black bottle and turning to look at 
the customer with something of a frown. “I’d ask leave 
to remind you, whoever you be, that while custom is always 
welcome, strangers as make so free as to behave oncivil on 
the premises, are apt to find theirselves pitched out, without 
‘With’ or ‘By your leave!’ ” 

“Give me my drink I’ve paid for, and stash your brag¬ 
ging, gaffer!” said the mouth that was like a bleeding 
wound under the ragged hair. “Take that water away! 
I’ll drink it neat. And since there’s talk of pitching— 
May the hand rot off that’s lifted to turn me out this 
night!” 


4 

The sensation caused by this amiable toast induced a 
slight commotion, through which the voice of Mr. Wix 
made excited efforts to be heard. 

“Lord, lord! Here is a bit o’ news that’s Local with a 
vengeance! And as has been waited here in Tolley mead 
for many a dragged-out year!” He continued, having at 
last secured the popular attention; first trumpeting loudly 
in the yellow silk handkerchief: “ ‘Many of our County 

‘readers, particularly those resident in the neighbourhoods 
‘of Brabycott, Tolley mead and Wheatstone, will be inter¬ 
ested by an item in Wednesday’s Law Gazette with refer¬ 
ence to the Chancery Suit in which the Plaintiff Wilfrid 
‘Thomasson Braby Esq. of Tolleymead, was admitted by 
‘the Court in 1857 to sue in fonna pauperis the setting aside 
‘of a Will made in the October of the year 1855 by his 
‘sister and only near relative, Miss Ann Thomasson Braby 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 33 

‘of Brabycott House, Brabycott, leaving to her sole Trustee 
‘and executor, Mr. Gregson Grundall, of The Chestnuts, 
‘Wheatstone, her entire estate and effects, personal and real; 
‘including the Freehold Title to Brabycott House, the park’ 
‘and lands pertaining, together with a sum of Seventy 
‘Thousand Pounds, invested in Home Rails and Consols. 
‘On the 23rd of this November, two days previously to the 
‘ending of the Michaelmas Law Term, the suit ended; its 
procedure having extended over a period exceeding thirteen 
‘years/ ” 

When Mr. Wix had begun to read, the snarling, sordid, 
shaggy tramp had plunged back into his darkling corner. 
Stephen could hear him muttering, and gulping down his 
rum. And the tap of ‘The Pure Drop’ was full of the 
sound of the wave that washed back to the wide, deep sea 
over stone and sand and shingle,—carrying weed and 
wreckwood and drowned men’s whitened bones. . . . 

“What’s that?” 

“Did ye ever!” 

“That’s News, and wi’ a vengeance!” 

These and similar exclamations were uttered by a dozen 
or more voices in as many different tones. 

“By your good leave, neighbours and all-” Rum- 

bold the wheelwright rose from the settle, making with 
the beer-mug in his great knotty hand, a sign—and not 
at all imperative—that quelled in some mysterious way 
the tumult in the tap. “Being,” the wheelwright went 
on, “of interest to many of the comp’ny, myself in par¬ 
ticular as being well acquainted wi’ one of the Parties in 
the Suit—I would ask you to kindly read us out the rest 
of what’s said in the paper—if so be as there’s any more 
to come ?” 

“Certainly, Mr. Rumbold,” said the Hall gardener, gra¬ 
ciously. “Ahem! Where was I ? Just in the middle, here. 
‘The decision of the Court has proved in favour of the 
‘Defendant, Mr. Gregson Grundall-’ ” 

“Order here, friends!” cried the wheelwright, loudly, 
a tumult of excited voices having drowned the reader’s 
here. “Go on, Mr. Wix. You’ve just read out as Grundall 
had got it-” 




34 The Pipers of the Market Place 


“ ‘In favour of the Defendant, Mr. Gregson Grundall; 
‘the Plaintiff, Mr. Wilfrid Braby, being ordered to pay 
'the entire costs of the Suit. It is stated, read the 
gardener, “ 'the said costs being chargeable upon the estate 
'in litigation,—that the entire sum of Seventy Thousand 
'Pounds left by Miss Ann Thomasson Braby will not serve 
'to defray them all; and that Brabycott House and its sur- 
'rounding park with the remainder of the property, will be 
‘shortly sold at auction under a decree from the Court.'. 

The voices of the listeners broke in anew with excited 
questions and comments. The wheelwright held up a 
huge brown hand signalling 'more to come.’ And silence 
having at last been gained by this stimulation of local 
curiosity, Mr. Wix hem-hemmed to clear his throat, and 
mopped his forehead and went on: 

" 'The Case which has after years of litigation reached 
‘its end with the ending of the Term, may be cited as one 
'of many instances where the undue partiality of a parent 
'for one child in favour of a brother or sister has led to 
'legal actions not only in the Civil, but in the Criminal 
'Courts.' " 

"’Ear, ’ear!” said Bendall the glazier. The gardener 


cunuuucu . 

‘“The Lord High Chancellor, Right Honourable Jus¬ 
tices, Masters, Counsel, Solicitors, clerks and divers wit¬ 
nesses have been engaged for a number of years in thrash¬ 
ing out the question whether the only son of the late 
'Geoffrey Thomasson Braby and only brother of the late 
'Miss Ann Thomasson Braby has or has not a claim upon 
'the family estate. The plaintiff, Mr. Wilfrid Braby, who, 
'penniless himself, has perforce been a party to the expendi¬ 
ture of many thousands, may console himself upon the 
‘one hand with the assurance that a considerable number 
‘of highly respectable persons intimately connected with 
'the legal profession, have been supported in affluence at 
'his expense during the past thirteen years. While upon 
'the other hand he may wring out the ghost of a smile at 
the reflection, that to the perseverance and tenacity oi the 
'solicitors representing him, Messrs. Tusser, Worrill and 
'Stickey, of Furnival's Inn, London, and the several elo- 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 35 

‘quent counsel who have been retained to plead his suit, he 
‘owes it that a mere moiety of the Braby property will drop 
‘into the already well-filled pockets of Mr. Gregson Grundall, 
‘of The Chestnuts, Wheatstone, the late Miss Ann Braby’s 
‘executor and legatee.’ ” 

“And there it ends,” said Mr. Wix, looking over the 
Newspaper, “with a friendly word for Braby, and a poke 
in the ribs for Grundall. Who had better have made terms 
with Braby when he might, than let him go to Law. My 
opinion is, that all Grundall will get, when the Chancery 
crows and kites and owls have done picking the bones of 
the Braby property—will be no more than you could put in 
your eye, and see none the worser for.” 

“This man is a bird of prey himself,” said a hollow 
voice from the corner, where the surly tramp had been 
coughing and muttering since last he spoke aloud. “He’s 
the son—or those who told me lied!—of Grundall of 
Tipping Mamet, the Braby solicitor and trustee, until Ann 
Braby died. I’ve heard he was educated for the law, and 
articled to his father, and made junior partner in the busi¬ 
ness, until he got kicked out. And though he’s a gentleman 
farmer now, and a Grower for the London Markets, you 
wouldn’t scratch the farmer deep without coming to the 
lawyer under his skin. That’s what I heard not far from 
here. Is it truth, or is it slander ?” 

“Truth, master,” said Rumbold bluntly, “by whoever 
it may ha’ been told.” 

“Then this man, being bred to the business of the Law, 
and having his father to back him,” pursued the speaker 
with such vehemence and heat that the sentences jostled 
on his tongue, “that same father being the sharpest old 
Blade the Law ever stropped to an edge!—has known how 
to dodge and twist and turn and use to his own advantage 
the opportunities that have come his way in these last 
Thirteen years.. Are the hall-marks of Chancery on Braby- 
cott, in Blight and rot and mildew? Have the Brabycott 
lands been farmed, or left to go to weeds and decay? 
Have the gardens been neglected or husbanded? Have 
the pastures been used for grazing, and the two ^home- 
farms kept going? Let those who can answer, say. 


36 The Pipers of the Market Place 

‘‘Why many here besides myself can answer they ques¬ 
tions,” said the wheelwright. “The House is shut, and 
the drive overgrown, and the shrubberies in want o 
ming, an’ th’ horses ha’ gone from the stables, an th 
grooms and coachmen too. But there’s no blight on Braby- 
cott as I knows on, up to the present.” 

“Then Chancery has winked, by Heaven!” retorted the 
other, savagely. 

“Whether Chancery have winked or not, things are as 
I say they be at Brabycott.” Rumbold continued as two 
sheepish-looking men got up and left the taproom. “There 
went two chaps as could bear me out. They work in the 
gardens there.” 

“Let them go to their master and tell him then, said 
the tramp with intense acrimony, “that a man turned in at 
‘The Pure Drop’ who said he was a scoundrel. Well, let 
them. It won’t be news to him.” 

“Come, come!” the landlord interposed. “A little more 
good-temper and a good deal less becalling ’ud make ye 
a pleasanter neighbour to folks as likes quiet wi’ their 
drink. If Grower Grundall’s won the Suit—much good 
may it do him!” 

“And so say I, Gaffer!” cried the tramp with almost 
rabid violence, flourishing the thick-stemmed rummer 
theatrically over his head. “Here’s the dregs of my 
drink to all the good I hope it may do the fellow! Greg- 
son Grundall of Brabycott House, Gentleman, and Justice 
of the Peace!” 

“Come, come!” said the landlord angrily, hurrying 
round the counter as the rummer, dashed to the stone- 
flagged floor, shivered to glittering bits. 

“Take eightpence to pay for the broken glass,” said the 
offender, tossing Popplewell a shilling, “let the mess lie 
or sweep it up and give me the change in rum. I’ll not 
smash the rummer this time, egad! for I’ve not the coin 
to pay for it. What d’ye say, with the paper there?” he 
broke off, turning on Wix. 

“I said, since my sayings interest you,” returned the 
Tolley Hall gardener with dignity, folding the paper and 
returning it to his tall hat and putting on the hat again, 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 37 

“as there’s no word in the Radical of Grundall g-ettine* 
Brabycott.” 

“You’ll find nothing in the London Law Gazette or the 
Courts of Chancery Chronicle retorted the other furi¬ 
ously, “and yet the thing is so. He has paid sixteen 
hundred into Court and come off with his Conveyance, 
curse him! and the title-deeds of a freehold worth thirty 
thousand or more. When the whole estate—every acre 
and tree, and brick and stone upon it—ay! and every 
horse and cow and pig, should have gone the way of the 
Money. And been gobbled up and swallowed down by 
the Chancery Fee Fo Fum.” 

“Now why to Goodness should you wish for that?” 
cried Rumbold. “Wouldn’t better a poor wronged gen¬ 
tleman should come into the property of his kin?” 

“The poor wronged gentleman, since you call him so, 
would agree with me,” said the other man resentfully. 
“ Tf the cargo’s not to be mine,’ he’d say, Tetter to Burn 
the ship!’ My point is this. The ship’s not burned. One 
third of her lading’s salvaged. And Grundall’s richer by 
the third, when all is said and done.” 

5 

The wind, which had been getting up, uttered at this 
juncture a long, low, confirmatory howl, and rain lashed 
on the windows and door. The feeble little fire sputtered 
and turned pale, and many of the clients of The Pure 
Drop,’ thinking of warmer hearths at home and following 
the Hall gardener’s example, jammed on their hats or 
caps as firmly as possible, turned their coat-collars up to 
their ears, and went out into the wild, wet blackness, with 
clashings of the heavy latch, and bangings of the door. 
Only the tougher spirits remained, for whose better com¬ 
fort Popplewell now produced and threw on the gasping 
little fire an armful of damp sticks and kindlings, of which 
it all but died. 

“’Twill smoke a bit and then burn up,” said the land¬ 
lord to his patrons, as the fire, all but smothered, made a 
struggle for its life. 


38 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“ ’Twill smoke most like,” said Rumbold. “There it 
comes. Phew! And again! Phew!” 

He wiped his eyes, stung by the smoke, on the end of 
his black silk neckerchief, got up from the settle, limberly, 
for his years, and went to the counter with his mug, and 
the mug of the old man next him, as the surly, argumenta¬ 
tive tramp, who had been feeling in his ragged pockets, 
limped over from his shadowy corner, and ordered “a pint 
of four ale.” 

“ ’Tis wettish weather for walking,” observed the wheel¬ 
wright to this miserable figure. 

“You’re right there,” said the combative tramp, not 
looking at the speaker direct. “Cursedly wet!” 

“And raw as well.” 

“And raw,” agreed the other sourly. “And with a chill 
in the rawness that bites you to the bone.” 

“Ale’s cold drinking for a chilled man, and though I am 
no friend to spirits,” said the wheelwright, “I’d offer you 
a half-quartern to mix wi’ yours, if you will?” 

As the other made a surly sound of assent, Rumbold 
gave the landlord the order, and taking the mugs that 
were now refilled, and putting the money on the counter, 
addressed a question to his neighbour in his mild, inoffen¬ 
sive way: 

“May I make so bold as ask you, how it came that you, 
a stranger, came to p’int the attentions of the company to 
the Braby Chancery Case?” 

“Since you ask a civil question I’ll answer it civilly,” 
the other man retorted, lowering his mug of beer and gin. 
He wiped his mouth with his dirty sleeve, and coughed 
and went on hoarsely: “They were reading the report 
that’s in the paper, and talking of the matter, in the tap- 
room of a public-house—at Wheatstone on the Great North 
Road.” 

“Where you happened to look in?” 

“Where I happened to drop in.” 

“You having come from London?” 

“I having tramped from London in this Blasted mud 
and rain. Said one oaf: ‘Here’s news to wake the people 
up to Tolleymead,—where nothing never happens ’twixt 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 39 

Lammas and New Year’s Day!’ So I borrowed a skry 
at the newspaper and- Are you satisfied, Mister ?” 

“Am I satisfied! Why, yes, I suppose I be, since I 
have had an answer. And yet I could have sworn,” said 
the wheelwright, “as I have seen you before.” 

“You have never known the man you speak to now, 
though you may fancy different. I’m a man whose blood 
has turned to gall,—the kind that they use for ink! A 
man that has lived on Hope for years—and precious little 
else. Others have fattened at my expense, while I went 
lean and empty, and the thing that would have sweetened 
Failure has been denied to me. For it’s worse for the 
dog that’s robbed of a bone to see it flung to another dog, 
than if the other jumped at it and got a kick instead. 
Thanks for the lush, if thanks you want! Drink’s said to 
be an enemy.” He drained the mug and set it down, end¬ 
ing: “It’s been a friend to me.” 

“Have you no other ? Think a bit!” said Rumbold. 

“I’m fagged past thinking. I’ll put up my legs on the 
bench there, and try for forty winks.” 

“Can ye sleep there?” 

“I can sleep there.” He jangled out a laugh. “I have 
slept under railway arches, and under market-waggons, 
and in every kind of hutch or lair that can kennel a home¬ 
less cur.” 

“Won’t ye come to th’ fire a bit first ?” 

“A fire like that’s a mockery to a man as drenched as 
I am. Besides, it smokes, and this damned cough shakes 
me enough without that!” 

He' shouldered back to his corner, where the bag and 
bundle rested, .and threw himself down beside them, put¬ 
ting up his legs with a groan. 

“Your ale, master,” Rumbold said, going back to his 
old seat on the settle, and tendering the second refilled 
mug to the old man by his side. 

“You’re wunnerful kind. Thankee, sir! and your 
health, and many on ’em!” piped the old man, who was 
bent and small and wore a suit of Workhouse corduroy 
many sizes too big. “I were saying”—he lost himself in 
beer, and came out of the mug to finish—“saying to my 



40 The Pipers of the Market Place 

son Eddard—a wunnerful good son is Eddard!”—Rum- 
bold glanced at the by-way-of-butcher, who grinned in a 
sheepish way—“saying as how I seed old Muster Braby 
buried in Eighteen Fifty-Five. Laid in the Family Wault 
he were—wi’ my werry own eyes I see him—along wi’ his 
Father an’ his pore wife—her as died when Mr. Wilfrid 
were chrissened, seven-and-twenty years before. ,, 

“Dad were always fond o’ a Funeral,” explained the 
by-way-of-butcher. 

“Wunnerful fond I were of ’em,” the old man piped 
cheerfully. “From, a little ’un, an’ so were my Mother. 
An’ when Miss Ann Braby were buried—not in the Wault 
but in th’ Churchyard,—her havin’ died o’ the Smallpox, 
that Year when it come to we—Eighteen Fifty-Seven it 
were, and me but Five-an’-Sixty!—I helped to putt her 
where she lays—a Guinea being paid to Bearers!—no’th 
o’ the West Tower, near to th’ Liar’s Stone.” 

Playing in his queer solitary way in the sawdusty dark 
behind the settle, Stephen could separate himself so 
far from the Stephen who was Captain of the Sea Rovers, 
as to follow with one ear and half his brain the trend of 
the recorded talk. Naturally he could comprehend the 
reference to the Liar’s Tombstone,—next to the Turning 
Yew Tree, the feature of Tolley mead Churchyard. 

A slab of rough-cut freestone, this, built into the north 
side of the square flint-built West Tower, inside which, 
when the door in it opened, you saw the Bell-Ropes hang¬ 
ing down. On the slab was a grisly epitaph, dated 1534, 
which Stephen—for the sake of its grisliness—had pains¬ 
takingly got by heart: 

‘Evil did I Live 

And Evil Doe I Dwelle. 

Once I Lyed on Erthe 
And Nowe I Lye in Helle/ 

The legendary story being, that the Liar, a local Nota¬ 
bility and a red-hot Patriot, had, after a crowning drink¬ 
ing-bout topped by bowls of blazing brandy, to celebrate 
the birth of the Reformation, and the establishment of 




About Stephen and His Masterpiece 41 

that pious Monarch, Henry the Eighth, as Defender of the 
Faith, had expired triumphantly impenitent, leaving a 
legacy of seven hundred gold nobles to the then incum¬ 
bent of the living; on condition that he—the Liar afore¬ 
said—should be buried in the spot mentioned, and the 
Tombstone bearing the Epitaph, composed in his last 
moments, duly let into the Tower. 

6 

“Birds of a feather!” said the Rector’s clerk and handy¬ 
man, pushing over the halfpence the crippled cobbler had 
won of him at cribbage, with the promise to ‘have back 
that and more,’ upon the very next night. “His Rever¬ 
ence, the Rector, remarked to me—in the first month of 
his being presented to the Living—me having put him in 
possession of the heads as might be called,—of the story,— 
that an appropriate Text on Miss Ann’s Stone than the 
present one it carries, would have been ‘He that hateth 
his brother is a murderer.’ ” 

“ ‘She,’ Mister—‘She,’ ” one of the younger men present 
corrected, a red-headed navigator of powerful build, in 
the customary fur-cap, pilot coat, moleskins, and leggings, 
whose nailed boots scraped on the stone floor as he slewed 
to render tribute to a spittoon: “Being a female—‘She,’ 
Mister!” 

“We are told in ’Oly Writ,” returned the Rector’s facto¬ 
tum, in a voice he kept for the Litany responses: “not 
to alter one jot, nor not one tittle, of the Revealed Word, 
young man.” 

“No offence,” said the navvy, emptying his pot of porter, 
throwing down some coppers in settlement, and passing the 
pot to Mr. Popplewell to be refilled, with the adjuration: 
“Put a Brocklow on the top.” He pursued, handing the 
cauliflower-headed pot to the Rector’s factotum as a peace¬ 
offering. “Wet your whistle with that. Mister, and if so be 
as you are willing—tell us what start her brother got up to 
as made the young woman hate him so bad?” 

“Why, I don’t know of anything partic’ler as he done 
to her, worse than having been born fifteen years later. 


42 The Pipers of the Market Place 

A squat, pasty young woman she were, nor not so young 
neither, wi’ a high narrow brow and a long pinched nose, 
and a tight hard mouth, like her father’s; and a pair o’ 
black eyes that were hard and bright as shoe-buttons, and 
pretty nigh as small. And a cruel hand for a horse’s 
mouth, ay, and for a dog-whip!” returned the clerk. 

“Burn my eyes!” said the navvy, spitting expressively, 
“you’re painting a Beauty as was a credit to the parents 
as brought her up.” 

“Why, the mother were a poor, weak, bullied soul, con¬ 
tinual reproached by her husband for not giving him a 
Heir. His father, old Mr. Braby, had bought th’ House 
and property from her own father, a ruined County gentle¬ 
man who had no other child. Braby havin’ made a fortin 
through follering the Sea, in the West Injy trade, folks 
said, as Partner o’ some Liverpool merchants. And the 
name o’ the place being Cott Hall, th’ old gentleman turned 
it into Brabycott, and left it when he died to his eldest son, 
in hopes of carrying on the line. ’Twasn’t as though th’ 
body didn’ do her best for to oblige him,” said the wheel¬ 
wright, perplexedly rubbing his prickly blue-shaved chin. 
“Son after son she bore to him, as never drew breath, poor 
woman! And when at last she had one, seeming like to 
thrive, she passed away, a-holding the hand of her maid, 
Susan Parmint, the one trew friend, I do believe, she had 
in th’ ’varsal world!” 

Roughly as Rumbold told the tale, with many turns of 
expression that might have been termed vulgar by the 
polished and genteel, there was so much genuine feeling 
in both accent and expression that his hearers sat in silence 
until he spoke again: 

“I don’t say whether her husband grieved,—I’d hardly 
think it likely. Or that when he slighted the unfort’nit 
babe, ’twas because he’d cost his mother’s life! But I do 
know, that from his cradle to the day he quitted Brabycott, 
Mr. Wilfrid were neglected, ill-treated and despised.” 

The navvy broke in again here between puffs of rank 
tobacco-smoke. 

“Why in Thunder didn’t the young Bloke—being treated 
so onnatural—Run away to Sea for a Cabin—Hold on, I’m 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 43 

wrong! ’Cos there was Money coming his way—in the 
Course o’ Natur’ presently, he stopped at home an’ made the 
best of a jiggered bad job!” 

“TV property weren’t Entailed, as the word is,” said 
Rumbold. “The old man could leave on it just as he liked. 
And I’ve fancied Miss Ann she said to herself, that if she 
played her cards well, she might come in what you call 
the course o’ Natur’, to lay her hands upon it all!” 

“Still, there was Money,” objected the navvy. “An’ 
nobody but a Born Fool ’ud run away from that!” 

The sleeper on the corner bench coughed in his uneasy 
slumber, as the wheelwright sat upright on the high-backed 
oaken settle, and, still holding the glowing bowl of his 
pipe between his oak-brown fingers, pointed the stem at 
the navvy in a stern, impressive way. 

“Born Fools talk in that manner, mate, meaning no 
offence to you! Hain’t you ever heerd that for some 
folks there’s p’ison in a glass o’ ale? Similarly whether 
Money’s a blessing or a curse depends on the sort o’ hands 
as holds it. He shied away from Money, did Mr. Wilfrid 
Braby—knowing in his inward mind ’twould be a blight 
on him. He never knowed no happiness until he turned 
an’ run from it. And well for him if he’d kept on a-run- 
ning to this day!” 

The hour approaching supper-time, you may take it 
that the conversation had been frequently broken in upon 
by the opening and shutting of the door, and the entrance 
and subsequent exit of now—persons of both sexes— 
requiring twopenny mugs of porter or ale to consume on 
the premises, together with screws of ’baeca, or porter and 
ale (or these liquids mixed) to be carried away in jugs. 

It was getting dark and Stephen knew that the light 
would be set in the window, and his mother would be wait¬ 
ing behind it with supper ready for her boy. Yet he lin¬ 
gered in his lurking-place behind the high-backed settle, 
lured into listening to the talk by the sound of a well- 
known name. 

For this Wilfrid Braby of whom men spoke was Stephen 
Braby’s father. No other boy in the village owned a 


44 The Pipers of the Market Place 

father called like that. And Rumbold’s deep and heavy 
voice was going on with his story, less like a man who tells 
a tale, than a man who talks to himself. . . . 

7 

“I’ve said as one reason why Mr. Wilfrid’s father and 
sister be-littled him, was because he thought little of Money, 
or its value, as he growed up. He’d give it away, right and 
left, as a boy, whenever he got any, which presently served 
as an excuse for not giving of him none. And having no 
gentlefolks’ clothes to spoil, and no gentlefolks’ sons as play¬ 
fellows, he played ball, and marbles, an’ buttons, with the 
sons of th’ Brabycott servants—till it come to be Rounders 
and Cricket wi’ the boys on Tolleymead Green. My son 
John—my dear boy as were killed in th’ Abyssinian Expe¬ 
dition !—were a comrade o’ Mr. Wilfrid’s—an’ Glazier 
Bendall theer.” 

“I were another on ’em,” boldly asserted Haybitt, the 
by-way-of-butcher. “Not as ’tis a thing to boast on in 
these here latter days. Eh, Dad ?” 

“I reckons not,” the old man piped in answer. “Theer 
were Glandell—but he lays in churchyard, an’ Dorliss— 
as were transported. An’ Gadd an’ Cozens an’ Trailing 
be in Work’us long o’ me. That be all on ’em, Eddard, 
as I can call to mind now!” 

“Exceptin’ Landlord Popplewell,” added the by-way- 
of-butcher, “who thought such a precious deal o’ him, 
as I’ve seed his name chalked—times and times—at th’ 
back o’ yon cupboard door.” 

“That be nayther here nor there,” said Rumbold un¬ 
easily. “ ’Tis easy twit a man wi’ his failings when he 
can’t stand up for hisself!” 

“An’ as regards my cupboard door,” the voice of Popple¬ 
well interrupted, “there’s a score or two chalked down to 
yourself, you may settle soon as you choose!” 

There was a general laugh at this home-thrust, and, men 
turning towards the landlord, Stephen experienced once 
more the shudder down his spine. 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 45 

“Come, Dad, shuffle up on your old pins,” said the butcher 
in some flurry. “ Tis gittin’ late, and after nine they won’t 
let ye into th’ House! Good night, all!” and dragging with 
him the pauper, who wheezingly protested, Haybitt un¬ 
latched the door, and the pair went out into the dark and 
rain. 

“Now, master,” said the navvy, addressing Rumbold, 
who had gone to the counter for tobacco, “touching this 
young Thingamy’s running away—where in Thunder did 
he run?” 

“That’s easy told,” said the wheelwright, taking advan¬ 
tage of the larger space now left at his end of the settle 
to lean back more easily and cross his lengthy legs. “Not 
a yard furder than this identical village.” 

“Jigger me! but I should ha’ thought he’d ha’ had a 
better spirit!” exclaimed the navvy. “Bust me and blow 
me tight if he wasn’t a soft arter all!” 

“In going to live where he had friends instead of where 
he’d got none! Think again, mate!” advised the wheel¬ 
wright, “before you call him soft! ’Twere Eighteen-fifty- 
one when he left home, I’d say he would be rising 
eighteen. . . . He came to me in my workshop, where I 
were planing a tail-board, looking white and wild and says 
to me: ‘What d’ye think, Old Rumbold,’—me being old 
to his notion, though little over fifty—‘Gregson Grundall 
and my sister Ann have won the trick they’ve played for. 
He’—meaning the harsh old man, his father—‘has turned 
me away from home. With just the clothes I stand in, 
and these few shillings,’—and he rattles ’em in his hand. 
‘Heart alive! Mr. Will, what have you done ?’ I says to 
him quite flabbergasted. And he says, ‘Nothing. Only 
told the truth about goings-on he’s blind to, and had the 
tables turned on me, and a thousand o’ bricks on my 
head. Only asked to be entered with some Premium paid 
in some decent House of Business, rather than go on liv¬ 
ing with him and Ann at Brabycott—more like a poor 
relation than a rich man’s only son! But I ha’ done wi’ 
him and his, from this day out forever, and as through 
him, I’m no way fit to make my way in life—I’ll earn my 


46 The Pipers of the Market Place 

bread as a workman or a labourer in this village, nigh to 
the walls of Brabycott Park, and the House where I were 

born!” . « i , 

“Consarn me, if I don’t think that showed a bit o 
spirit,” commented the navvy, slapping, his moleskinned 
thigh. “He were over young to ’arn his bread along o^ 
the pick an’ shovel, or I’d ha’ said, Take on wi a Gang, an 
try breaking th’ roads.” . 

“He made a poor workman too, poor chap! interpo¬ 
lated Bendall the glazier. 

“Lord bless my heart!” returned the wheelwright, rub’ 
bing his leg perplexedly. “He tried hard!—Hard he 
tried,—but he had more thumbs than fingers!—and if he 
heerd me say it he’d know ’twere not meant unkind! There 
never were a ’prentice more hopelesser at the Wheelwright- 
ing. He spiled wood, and he blunted and turned my tenon- 
saws and planes and adzes till even I advised of him to try 
another trade. And with a few pounds in money he got by 
the sale of some whatnots, a gold watch that had been his 
mother’s, along o’ th’ chain and charms, he bought a smock 
and overalls and took a place with a Dairyman—and lost it 
through lying overlate a-bed and forgetting to swill the 
churns.” 

“Then it were as th’ reverend gentleman predecessing 
of the present Rector looked in on the old gentleman at 
Brabycott,” suggested the Rectory handy-man. 

“And found him tough as seasoned ash and hard as 
flint,” said Rumbold, knocking the hot ashes out of his 
pipe on the palm of his hardened hand. “ ‘My son/ he 
says, ‘being back’ard from a child, and feeble in his intel¬ 
lects, has a great idea of his own cleverness, like other 
Naturals. Let him come back if he chooses, to this house 
that he were born in. The run of his teeth, his keep and 
clothes, he can have as he has had Previous. But his 
walks will be limited to the grounds; and I expressly stippy- 
late that his low associates are dropped! ‘He shall live at 
my charge here,’ he goes on, ‘or wherever I decide to place 
him: and Proper Control will be exercised, in case he breaks 
out again. And when I die, in Natur’s course, his sister 
will act as his guardian. For my estate has been left to her, 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 47 

my money is exclusively settled upon her, the Law of this 
land not compelling of me to make a Idiot my heir!’ ” 

The figure huddled on the shadowy bench coughed again 
convulsively, as the navvy hit his moleskinned thigh a 
smack with his open palm. 

“Jigg er the chap an’ burn his eyes for a onnat’ral parent! 
And what did Young Guts do arter that? Cut up, or take 
it calm ?” 

'‘He was wonderful fond o’ horses, and they of him, ,, 
returned Rumbold. “He were took by-and-by as stable¬ 
man to a horse-breeding farmer-grazier—and often druv 
his Master to markets and sales of Stock. Filled out, 
strengthened and set up by the rough life he were leading, 
he growed to be as handsome a young man as you’d see 
in a ten-mile round. His clothes, if poor, being neatly 
kep’, and his linen clean and mended, along o’ Mrs. Par- 
mint seeing to it, that were.” 

“Dead years ago. A kind old soul as ever trod in pat¬ 
tens,” said Bendall. 

“She had been part nurse, part lady’s-maid to the poor 
weak soul, his mother, and nurse to Mr. Wilfrid too, till he 
were seven or more,” continued Rumbold, between whom 
and Bendall the narration threatened to become a kind of 
athletic contest, the glazier letting the wheelwright talk 
until, coming to some point of interest, his rival would 
nimbly interpose and gallop on ahead. “And having put 
by a tidy sum before she quitted Service, she bought from 
Sir Cockley Bendish (as were Lord of the Manor in them 
days) the Freehold o’ a little two-roomed cottage on the 
edge o’ the Tolley Farm wheatacres. And living wi’ 
‘Parmy,’ as he called her,—and working for his living, 
—I’ll lay as Mr. Wilfrid were happier than he’d ever been 
in his life! It was when the good old lady died, leaving 
him her bit o’ Freehold and two or three hundred pounds 
in Bank,—that he fust went a bit wrong. But the next 
thing as falls out in the reg’lar course o’ happenings-” 

“Is,” broke in Bendall, dexterously forestalling the 
wheelwright, “that the old gent to Brabycott ups and 
quarrels wi’ his daughter, because of Miss Ann making too 
free along of a Married Man.” 



48 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“The son of Lawyer Grundall, he were,” said Rum- 
bold, getting ahead again. “Him as we call at this pre¬ 
sent day, Grundall the Grower. As were Defendant in the 
Chancery Suit and now owns Brabycott. Which he 
wrote—old Mr. Braby wrote—a letter to Mr. Wilfrid, say¬ 
ing, roughly enough and short enough—as he’s sorry as 
he’d used him bad! But as he’d find when he were gone, 
he’d Provided for him properly, in a new Will he’d had 
drawed up, and meant to Execute that day. Then he 
sends—old Mr. Braby sends- 

“A groom on a fast trotter,” thrust in Bendall, who had 
been lying in ambush for a chance to cut in once again. 
“To fetch Mr. Grundall Senior from his office at Tipping 
Marnet—which Grundall come out in his high-wheeled 
gig, wi’ his horse one lather o’ foam. An’ they was closeted 
over a hour afore Grundall left him. An his clerk which 
were uncle to Dotsoe here, drove out early next mornin 
to Brabycott, in the fly from the ‘Rose and Lion/ with the 
new Will in his bag. ’Twas arranged as he’d call an’ fetch 
it, when Mr. Braby had read it, and signed it afore Wit¬ 
nesses—he didn’t ask Dotsoe to be one! So Dotsoe drives 
off to ‘The Braby Arms’ in the village, to get some dinner; 
and when he gets back to Brabycott at the time as had 
been appinted, ’tis to find-” 

“As Mr. Braby,” interposed the wheelwright, “had been 
took off by a Seizure,—as they found him in his library, 
stone-dead in his easy-chair. As for the new Will he’d made 
when angered wi’ his daughter, who’d bin sent to a clergy¬ 
man’s widder at Brighton, who took boarders in-” 

“That there Will”—Bendall, nimbly leaping in, pounced 
upon the climax—“That there Will had wanished off the 
face o’ this mortal planet.” 

The navvy suggested: “Swallered?” 

“Or burned, more like,” said Rumbold. “But being th* 
height of summer, an’ Eighteen Fifty-Five were a hot un! 
there wasn’t no fire in th’ library grate for him to burn 
it in. And when you tear a Document, there’s bits of 
scratted Paper. So Miss Ann she proves the signed Will, 
and takes possession of all. And as if to show he doesn’t 
care, and contents himself without fortun’, Mr. Wilfrid 



About Stephen and His Masterpiece 49 

ups an' marries a young woman in a humble way of life.” 

‘‘She come of Strolling people,” said Bendall, sprinting 
ahead again; “Tinkers or Gipsies, one or th’ other or 
both.” 

“But th' young woman, mind you, were honest and 
respectable,” said Rumbold, “and moreover a regular Mas¬ 
terpiece according to looks and size. He seed her first at 
Marnet Fair where he’d gone on th’ farmer’s business— 
for the Tinkers was ’camped on a Common Land, back of 
the Fair Booths.” 

“She were kneading dough,” cut in Bendall, “on a board 
laid over two buckets-” 

“And she got up an’ wapped her hands,” Rumbold 
continued, recovering the lead and leaving the glazier in 
the rear, “as Mr. Wilfrid he rode by with a string of six 
young horses he’d come to sell to th’ dealers at the Fair. 
Six feet two in her stockings—with such a clinking pair 
of eyes, and such a noble pair o’ arms, and such a quantity 
o’ yellow curls a-streaming from under her sunbonnet— 
as had slipped back on her shoulders—a whopping pair o’ 
shoulders!—such a maid young Wilfrid Braby had never 
seed afore. He sold off his string o’ horses without overly 
chaffering, and slipped away from the graziers and dealers 
as wanted to stand. He went back to where the Wans was, 
and scraped up the gal’s acquaintance; and she being sick of 
a wandering life, and took with Mr. Wilfrid, they two 
struck hands for a Forthright Match—and she follered him 
then an’ there! And having money about him, enough to 
buy a Licence—they were married by th’ parson at East 
Marnet Parish Church.” 

“An’ when he took his pardner home,” inquired the navvy 
at this juncture, “how did Miss Ann take it?” 

“Why, she were away from Brabycott—’twere said in 
Foreign Parts. And as to how she took the news,” said 
the wheelwright, “I couldn’t tell you. But about th’ time 
as Grundall’s son took his name off the Firm’s brass door¬ 
plate—an’ took hisself into the Growing line—Miss Ann 
come back to th’ House. Wi’ her maid Sophy Petcher, a 
red-haired, sharp young woman, and never left the place no 
more until she took an’ died.” 



50 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Which—” Bendall dashed in at this juncture,—“which 
she did in Eighteen Fifty-seven. Smallpox having broke 
out in the neighbourhood—which she catched and were 
carried off. Leaving Mr. Wilfrid One Guinea to buy a 

Mourning Ring wi’-” , . , , «« « 

“And every stick and stone and brick and every blessed 
ha’penny,” said Rumbold, sprinting on ahead, “to Law¬ 
yer Grundall’s son. ‘To Gregson Grundall Esquire, says 
the Will, ‘my trusted friend and Executor. All property 
real and personal of which I die possessed.’ ” 

“Him being the Married Bloke as her father had fallen 
out wi’ her on account on. ’Tis a rum world, narbors 
says the navvy. “Burn my eyes if it bain’t!” He added 
as he pouched his pipe, and jerked his thumb at Popple- 
well signifying his intention to order some more liquor, 
“An’ then this pore unlucky chap—Wilford or whatever 
his name were—he goes to Law to git his share —’’ 

“On the stren’th,” said Bendall, cutting in, of there 
havin’ been a Will Made in his favour by his father before 
he died. He pores over his father’s letter, till he gets 
quite yellow with poring, and he somehow gets hold of the 
original Draft of the Will as has been lost. And the long 
and the short of it is that he goes with these Papers to 
some London Lawyers, an’ they Files a Bill and issues a 
Writ, an’ starts the Chancery Suit.” 

“And when his money were all gone,” interposed Rum- 
bold, “which wasn’t overmuch in the beginning, being got 
by the sale of the Cottage an’ th’ bit o’ ground left him 
by his nurse, he gits admitted by the Courts to plead his 
cause for Ekitty as a Pauper. An’ he have plead an’ pled 
an’ plod for Thirteen mortal year.” 

“An’ now ’tis over, an’ the money gone down the throats 
o’ the Blistered lawyers,” said the navvy. ‘‘And he’s a 
Pauper double-dyed,—what’s gone of his wife?” 

“She lives in the cottage Braby used to own,” returned 
Rumbold, “an’ pays rent fur it, workin’ with her hands 
from day to day to keep herself and her child.” 

“A pint o’ porter over here in a tankard and look sharp 
with it,” ordered the navvy, plunging in his moleskins for 
the coin. “An’ she’s a woman wi’ a good name ? A decent- 



About Stephen and His Masterpiece 51 

living woman?” he continued, throwing the coppers down 
on the bar, and rubbing the back of his neck. 

“She's a woman wi’ a name so well-respected in this 
here village,” said Rumbold, “as the worst man in it, and 
the woman most looked down on, would—if there’s half 
the good we’re taught there is in Human natur’,—strike 
the foul mouth that spoke a bad or bawdy word of her. Re¬ 
membering thirteen years agone and what she done in 
Tolleymead when the Smallpox scourge were on us—I ask 
those friends who hear me now if I have spoke th’ truth?” 

“And he never came back ?” the navvy inquired, through 
a confirmative murmur of voices. 

“Meaning her husband? Twice he come back. Your 
health.” 

“Samodithee!” The navvy, after delivering himself of 
this extraordinary utterance, drank with a flourish, as 
though the word conveyed some sentiment. 

“The first time was no longer than six weeks after he’d 
left her. The second,” said Bendall, passing the post, 
“were over eleven year back. Since when nor bone nor 
feather o’ the man has the poor soul set eyes on. Nor I 
could swear, has she had from him one single written 
word!” 

“Most likely went to Foreign Parts,” remarked the navvy, 
passing Bendall the porter-pot. “Or croaked.” 

“Maybe. We’re mortal, mate. Here’s luck to you an’ 
we.” 

“Mortal we are, that’s mortal true. Samodithee!—as 
the folks say in the parts as I come from.” 

“And where might that be, master?” asked Rumbold 
pleasantly, as the navvy finished the porter, wiped his 
broad shaven upper-lip, which glittered with the growth 
of strong red hair as though dusted with copper-filings, and 
set down the empty tankard on the bar. 

“West Midlands. I’m a Newport man,” returned the 
navvy, heavily, pulling out his pipe and a lump of twist 
and a big horn-handled knife. . . . “But croaked I hope, 
for the woman’s sake!” he went on yet more heavily. “Best 
thing she could do for herself ’ud be to pick up another man. 
No gentleman’s blood in him this time, like th’ ramshanklin’ 


52 The Pipers of the Market Place 

chap she married. By Gum! th’ blasted rain s gone by. Tis 
clearin’ up for fine.” 

A customer had passed out without shutting the door 
behind him. It had swung back, showing a square of 
blackness like a velvet curtain, with a young moon lying 
on her back on the right hand, near the top. Stars pierced 
the blackness here and there. And on the clumped horizon, 
London glimmered and paled and twinkled, like a constella¬ 
tion plucked from the garden of the sky, withering on the 
dustheap of the world. 


8 

The navvy got up and kicked the door to, with a curse on 
the customer’s bad manners, and the huddled figure of the 
snarling tramp on the bench in the corner moved. Said 
the hoarse voice which had in it a quality of refinement, 
startling by its contrast with the speaker’s squalor and 
neglect: 

“So the wife Young What’shisname picked up in a day 
amongst the travelling Tinkers—is living yet in the— 
howd’yecall—the cottage by the wheatacres? Has she 
taken up with another man, in place of her runaway mate ? 
The speaker dropped his legs to the floor, as a silence fell 
upon the taproom, and moved forwards with his footsore 
gait until the lamplight shone upon his face. He went on, 
pulling off his wreck of a hat, and pitching it into the corner, 
“There are people here I used to know—besides Popplewell 
and Rumbold there! More than ten years’ desertion would 
justify her—I admit it! . . . Now answer my question. 
Is my wife my wife or not?” 

“If you asks me: ‘Do she live by herself or wi’ another 
Party—said Party being o’ th’ opposite sex?’ I’d answer 
‘Yes, she do!’ Th’ Party being her son, master, and 
yourn, an’ no man else’s!” The wheelwright got up from 
the settle here, and came forward with his heavy stride. 
“And you’ll shake hands wi’ an old friend, I hope, Mr. 
Wilfrid Braby, on coming back to Tolleymead after so 
many years!” 

“So you’ve found me out, have you, Old File?” said 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 53 

the tramp, shaking hands with Rumbold, as Bendall and 
Dotsoe and Popplewell and his stout wife came forward 
to shake hands too. Some of them furtively wiped their 
palms, as though his grip were clammy, and unpleasant to 
the contact of their more wholesome flesh. He went on, 
and the exhalations from his breath, and skin, and clothing 
tainted the air about him with a stronger spirituous reek: 
“A faithful wife, and a living heir to my ancestral acres. 
Curse it! that’s joyful news, I hope, to greet a man’s return? 
For a man may stay away for years, and—What the Hell’s 
that, yonder?” 

As the shaking voice yapped out the words, heels ground 
on the sanded flagstones, and Stephen shuddered from top 
to toe, as men turned to look at him. For almost without 
knowing it he had moved from behind the settle, when 
Rumbold had risen, and followed like a pup, close at the 
wheelwright’s heels. 

“Good Lord ha’ mercy!—’tis the boy, and pat upon the 
question,” said Rumbold, dropping his long clay pipe, 
which broke upon the stones. 

“My boy!” cried the hoarse, shrill voice, with an ugly 
rattling laugh in it. And Steve, who was picking up the 
bits of the smashed clay with an eye to soap-bubbles later, 
found himself gripped by the back of his smock and hauled 
up from the floor. “Come over here under the lamp, you 
young devil, and let me look at you!” said the hoarse voice 
roughly, and a hot bony hand turned Steve’s reluctant face 
to the light. . . . 

And he found himself staring up into another face, sal¬ 
low and lean, and haggard, with black eyes that were 
bright and empty too, set in ragged black hair and beard. 
And the breath that was flame scorched him—and even as 
he winced from the contact, he knew that the face was a 
drunkard’s face, and the breath a drunkard’s breath. . . . 

“Snivel, you whelp,” said the shrill cracked voice, “and 
I’ll cut you off with a shilling! What d’ye say? Speak 
louder!” 

“I wasn’t a-cryin’!” gulped Steve. 

“You lie!” contradicted the shaky voice. “Quick now! 
Up with you!” 


54 The Pipers of the Market Place 

And Stephen found himself sitting on the counter of the 
tap in the circle of oily light. 

“Please, I want to go home/’ he whined, for the surface 
of the counter was chilly, and the wave had washed in 
again, this time, when men turned to stare. . . . 

“Home be damned!” said his captor. “Snivel—and I’ll 
disown you! A quartern of rum, Mother Popplewell, and 
leave the water out. And score it up behind the door, for 
I’ve not a coin left me! We’re going to see if this youngster 
is a chip of the old block!” 

“You won’t give him none, Mr. Wilfrid, now! ’Tis 
cruel bad for children,” the landlady protested, as she served 
him with the rum. 

“He shall only have a sip, old girl!” said Braby, wink¬ 
ing at her. “I’ll take care of the rest of it, but a sip I’ll 
have him take. Down it, you measly, white-gilled thing 
in yellow curls and petticoats! Stop! Here’s the senti¬ 
ment that carries down the drink. Look at your Dad, you 
puppy, and say the words after me. ‘Here’s to Unnatural 
Fathers and grasping Elder Sisters. May they suffer in 
the next world, as they made him suffer in this!’ ” 

“Mr. Wilfrid!” Rumbold interposed, and to that rough- 
cut face of mahogany, Stephen turned his own white, child¬ 
ish face and scared, entreating eyes. . . . 

Perhaps the latch of the door had clicked, unnoticed, a 
moment previously when cold damp air had saluted young 
Stephen’s dangling legs. But now, as the edge of the pew¬ 
ter rapped his chattering teeth unpleasantly, and the brown, 
sticky liquor that brimmed it, smelt like his enemy’s breath; 
and the staring faces of different hues, crimson, or brown 
or yellow, melted and swam together into hazy, featureless 
blurs, he became aware, with a rush of relief, that his 
mother was looking down on him, with the top of her 
bonnet brushing the cobwebbed beams of the ceiling, and 
her great grey eyes shining like two maternal stars. 

Next moment the pewter measure was snatched from 
the hand of Stephen’s enemy, and the liquor hissed on the 
embers of the weakly little fire. And, rendering testimony 
to Popplewell’s honesty, raced up the chimney in a spurt of 
roaring violet flame. 


About Stephen and His Masterpiece 55 

“Who the hell are you?” Braby screamed, facing round 
on his assailant. “Why, it’s Malvina herself, by G-” 

“The same, master, I reckon.” 

She answered calmly in her deep, soft voice, the kind 
of voice you would expect from a woman of her grand pro¬ 
portions who—Rumbold excepted—stood higher by a 
head than the tallest man in the tap, and her heavy curls, 
the colour of red wheat, streamed from under her tilted 
sunbonnet, framing her grave, majestic face, and curtain¬ 
ing her columnar neck and ample, massive shoulders, as 
they had always done in Stephen’s memory of her. . . . 

“The same!” Braby showed the tobacco-stained teeth 
in his straggling beard as he inspected her. “Hardly altered 
in the last thirteen years! Save that the strapping wench 
I left has become a handsome woman. Come now, ’Vina, 
haven’t you a word of compliment? Not for the well- 
dressed, good-looking husband you used to be so proud of 
once!” 

“That’s to prove yet, master,” Malvina returned qui¬ 
etly. 

Her attitude was almost bovine in its repose as she stood 
with her great arms hanging by her sides, enduring his 
haggard stare. Raindrops glittered here and there on the 
shawl that covered her bosom, softly heaving with her 
deep, even breaths. A wild fragrance of the fields clung 
about her clothing, so that no milky mother of the herd 
and byre ever smelt more sweet than she. And the deep 
corners of her lips, and the long corners of her eyelids were 
full of shadowy sweetness, so that Steve forgot his terrors 
in looking and worshipping. . . . 

“Well ?” Braby demanded, abandoning his cynical scrutiny. 
“Say what you think of me, ’Vina? Am I altered for 
better or worse?” 

A chair scraped on the sanded floor, and the navvy with 
the red head, who had not spoken for some time, but sat 
sulkily smoking, cleared his throat noisily and largely con¬ 
tributed to the spittoon. Then the voice of Stephen’s mother 
said, and though she barely raised it, its full, deep, breathy 
softness seemed to fill the entire room: 

“That’s to prove yet, master, as I’ve said. Let’s be step- 



56 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

ping home-along. ’Tis getting late, an’ past th’ hour for 
th’ boy to be abed.” 

‘‘What!” Braby jeered, as she lifted Steve from the coun¬ 
ter and set his bare feet gently on the sanded stones of 
the floor: “D’ye welcome me to bed and board without a 
single question as to what I’ve been doing with my time in 
the last twelve years?” 

Standing in the shelter of his mother and looking up at 
her, Steve saw a faint carnation creep up the sun-browned 
fairness of her throat. Her smooth, full cheeks were 
tinged with it, as she returned her answer: 

“The fewer questions asked, I reckon, the fewer lies be 
told. Better be stepping home, master, before it gets to 
midnight.” 

“Home!” He yelped out a shrill laugh, would-be defiant 
and reckless. “The home I sold over your head and the 
head of your new-born child! What did you say when 
you learned that? Eh, ’Vina, tell me?’" 

“Why, that it were yo’r own place, to keep or sell at 
yo’r will. We’ll not be turned out while th’ rent be paid 
—and I ha’ paid it regular—to Grundall the Grower—him 
being landlord now.” 

“Ay!” Braby’s smouldering eyes blazed up. “I’d have 
burned the place level with the ground rather than he should 
have had it! But I gave the Bill of Sale to another man 
and the blackguard diddled me! One of these days I’ll 
square with him—by Hell and all its Devils!” He said it 
with froth at the corners of his lips and a snarling, rabid 
viciousness that to Stephen, who had seen one, suggested 
a mad dog. “Now, here’s the cream that tops the whole 
accursed, damnable swindle!” He mouthed dumbly while 
he gathered breath, and then burst out more violently: 
“Hark you to this! The Commissioners of the Court have 
sold Brabycott to whom? This bloated rogue—this kite 
from a stinking nest—Gregson Grundall the Grower! What 
do you think of that ? Isn’t it Rich ? Now, ’Vina, what d’ye 
say ?” 

As he dropped on a Windsor chair near by, gasping for 
breath, and coughing, Malvina extended a massive hand, 
and touched him gently on the arm. 


About Stephen and Hu Ma$terpU77 

-~ScrJyvz this—that every night fin' yt TnJyt 

ba' tamed in th’ window, a* I promised //her* y; 
away f twould bum till yo’ come back, Y r/ be my maz * 
reckons. I’ve nothing more to say to tU Yst tfca* \ 
to'tzu a-hing on bench over in corner there 

He nodded silently and she went to the bench, 
rp the dilapidated carpet-bag, and took from the r*ri-ha 
MnVs hand the sodden hat that he offered her with a ceaer 
word of thanks. Then with her disengaged right amt ’be 
raring Stephen to her shoulder, where be sat astraddle, wmt 
iz arm around her head, Winking like a sieepy young tv1 

4i Good night to ye, Mrs. Brabv," said die wreetwr^ix 
readying Brabv, who with some assistance from ht* strong 
irtirn hand had staggered to his feet. 

“Good night t’ yob . . . Now, blaster! ... Cr zsg 
rt on tight, mv sonnv, an’ don’t ferget to dock vc*’r bead tr 
th* lintel o’ th^door.” 

So the Three went out into the sill black fdl of 
zccizg and gurgling noises, from overflowing eaie-ms 
-z>d water-butts, and gutters full to the brim. As the dccr 
asbed-to behind them, the red-haired zgnry g — - —* - and 
imechizg rumbled in his throat that zrgzr bzre bca a 
itsgh. But the silence was broken by no ether scczc. trnzE 
bold’s deep voice said solemnly: 

“Tis well few the weak men o' th' ezr± as A’ Lrrf 
zade women like that one.—to bear their babes az’ ±er 
tzdezs, and say to ’em: ‘ding on f ** 














Book the Second: 

HOW STEPHEN SAW THE MARKET PLACE AND FELL 
IN LOVE WITH A ROSE 




Book the Second: how Stephen saw the 

MARKET PLACE AND FELL IN LOVE WITH 
A ROSE 

I 

A ND that is how the Shadow fell on the cottage by the 
wheatacres;—a solid Shadow of crapulous flesh and 
vitiated blood. A hateful Shadow, with a cursing voice, 
with bleared eyes and shaking hands; a spirituous thirst 
that could not be quenched, and a breath that burned like 
fire. 

To Malvina he was her ‘Master/ and, in the natural 
course of things, must be Stephen’s also. No one would 
ever know how much her heroic love endured. But em¬ 
ploying a term gleaned from War News, that fateful night 
in ‘The Pure Drop,’ to Stephen he was always ‘The Enemy’ 
or ‘The Marching Enemy Corpse.’ 

It was curious to observe how this unhappy man, from 
his birth the innocent object of unnatural dislike on the 
part of his sister and father, justified their attitude, if 
hatred can ever be justified,—by the vicious degradation 
of these degenerate years. 

As to where he had been, or what he had done while 
the Braby Chancery Suit lasted, it might be gathered that, 
like other miserable wretches in similar case, he had hung 
about the neighbourhoods of Westminster, and Lincoln’s 
Inn Hall. A ramshackle edifice at this era, held up by 
blackened timber shores, on a cat-haunted desert of flag¬ 
stones and sooty gravel; reached by a rusty iron gateway 
on the west side of Chancery Lane. 

At the beginning, by his own account,—for he was given 
to retrospect, and whether his mood were mild, or maud¬ 
lin, or malignant, the tale rehearsed, in most points proved 
to be the same,—his case appeared to have attracted some 
degree of sympathy. 


61 


62 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

When non-payment of certain costs, incurred at the be¬ 
ginning of his career as a litigant, had landed him in the 
Queen’s Prison under the stigma of contempt, some un¬ 
known hand had paid his debts, and later, being admitted 
to plead his suit before the Court as a Pauper, he had sub¬ 
sisted precariously, as others in like case. 

It was to his interest, as to theirs, to possess no regular 
subsistence, lest they should be Dispaupered and deprived 
of the right to plead. Like these others, haunting the 
Chancery Courts, while the mills of Equity were grinding, 
he had earned his bread by employments such as could be 
followed at night. He had copied for a legal printer at 
twopence per MS. folio, and set type in the printer’s shop 
of a morning newspaper. He had gone on as a super¬ 
numerary in divers theatrical spectacles, had driven a night- 
cab for the proprietor of a mews, washed crockery for the 
keeper of a coffee-stall, and made toast for the midnight 
breakfasts of sewer-men and market-folk. 

Later, as the rust of Chancery, and this vagabond life 
ate into him, the vice of intemperance developed in the 
man, and he sank from regular employ. He ceased—for 
the last three or four years of the Suit—to have a definite 
lodging. He slept where homeless vagrants sleep, and fed 
where the destitute feed. 

He had swept a crossing near Lincoln’s Inn, and reaped 
sixpence from a Queen’s Counsel (one of two retained on 
the Plaintiff’s side in the Case of Braby v. Grundall, at a 
fee of One Hundred Guineas each, and refreshers of so 
much). And suffering as this poor wretch undeniably had, 
he had been sustained through the atrocious ordeal, when 
his last hope had flickered out, by seeing the money go. 

Some quality of indomitableness survived the deteriora¬ 
tion of his character. He was sustained by things of which 
a weaker would have died. When Messrs. Tusser, Worrill 
and Stickey transferred their name-plate to handsome offices 
in Bank Buildings, and Tusser, an excellent family man, 
took a mansion in Hanover Square, while Worrill, who 
favoured country air, removed to a villa at Sydenham, and 
Stickey took a set of chambers in the neighbourhood of 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 63 

Regent Street, ‘So much the less for Grundall!’ was the 
thought in the mind of their client. When signs of prosper¬ 
ity similar to these were developed by, the Defendant’s solic¬ 
itors, the pinched and ragged Plaintiff knew a spasm of 
savage joy. Grundall would win, he sensed it in his bones, 
but every Term that ended without an ending of the Suit 
meant the less for Grundall in the end. 

He felt defrauded that the close had left Grundall master 
of Brabycott. He had wanted the ultimate acre sold under 
an order from the Court. And now. ... He grinned and 
showed his teeth like a stoat with a broken backbone, that, 
under the crunch of the keeper’s iron-nailed heel, makes its 
last attempt to bite. He had lived on that hope of ven¬ 
geance, growing bitterer and more cankered, until his blood 
had turned to gall, and his heart had withered in his breast. 
As for his soul, it lurked remote in some corner of his being, 
like some domestic animal immured in a deserted house. A 
wasted, shadowy, feeble thing, that has fed on mice and 
beetles, and licked the drippings from the basement-taps, till 
the water was cut off. And should have perished long ago, 
and yet lasts on in anguish, forgotten, it would seem, by 
Death, yet dying every day. 


2 

Well-meant attempts were made by old friends to find 
Braby employment. They were thanked with cynical hu¬ 
mility, or were not thanked at all. A horse-breeding grazier 
offered him a job, but he had lost his nerve with horses. 
The farmer at Tolley Hall Dairy Farm would have taken 
him on as fogger. He declined, as ministering to the wants 
of beasts was unworthy of his status and education. He 
was ready to do anything; and yet it appeared, there was 
nothing that he could do! . . . Finally the Rector’s gar¬ 
dener-clerk, who was Secretary to the local Benefit Club, 
engaged him as assistant bookkeeper at an infinitesimal 
wage. And the Master of the National School,—since 
Braby was a skilful penman, employed him, with the Rec¬ 
tor’s sanction, in heading copybooks. 


64 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

Three gross of these, perfectly new, at threepence with 
marbled covers, were subsequently condemned by the Rector, 
innocuous precepts bidding youth: 

‘Excel By Earnest Effort/ 

‘Build Up Character Brick By Brick/ 

‘Respect The Persons of Superiors/ 

having been found adulterate with maxims of a revolution¬ 
ary kind: 


‘Lest Your Enemy Seize The Ship, 

Burn, or Sink Her to The Bottom/ 

might have passed as patriotic, had not: 

‘Fight For Your Rights, Revenge Your Wrongs/ 


and: 


‘Never Say Die Until The Other Man Is Dead, 

Then Life Will Be Worth Living/ 

reflected the un-Christian violence of the writer's state of 
mind. 

What he earned, he spent at ‘The Pure Drop' on rum 
or gin or whisky. When penniless the rowdier patrons of 
the tap treated him to make him talk. Or Popplewell 
would chalk a score against him on the door of the cup¬ 
board, which score, Malvina, hearing of, would do extra 
work to pay. What she thought of the dreadful change 
in him, she locked within her bosom. Not even Stephen 
would ever know the secret guarded there. 

It would tax the powers of a more gifted pen than mine 
to portray Malvina, that simple and untutored soul, housed 
in so magnificent a frame. To her in her budding woman¬ 
hood Braby had come as a lover, so unlike the other men 
she knew that he dazzled her simple eyes. Malvina had 
never heard the tale of King Cophetua and the Beggar- 
maid, but some scrap of a story akin to it had come bravely 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 65 

in at this crisis, to be tacked to the dapper figure of a dark¬ 
eyed, undersized young man in careless country riding- 
dress and a jauntily tilted wideawake, with sharp steel 
spurs on his butcher-boots, and a horn-handled hunting- 
crop. 

The love-match of the grazier’s foreman and the girl 
who had travelled with the tinkers had not been quite as 
sudden as village talk described. But whether within one 
day or a week of days, their marriage had followed their 
meeting—the rapidity of the affair had rivalled the swift 
matings of a Southern land. 

Braby had been passionately intrigued by her size, her 
strength and beauty; her purity, candour and innocence 
he discovered later on. What discoveries Malvina was 
fated to make were delayed by her simplicity and igno¬ 
rance. And the strength of the passion he called to life 
could feed and did ere long—upon itself. 

Through years of loneliness she had worked and waited 
in patient silence, and the heyday of her wonderful beauty 
had passed like a shadow on the corn. Now he had come 
back, and the bright dark eyes that had smiled under the 
brim of the wideawake hat were bleared and reddened with 
liquor, and the mouth that had taught her kissing, never 
opened without a jeer or a curse. 

Now the wideawake hat, a mere felt rag, hung in a 
cupboard of the cottage, on a hook from which the rusty 
spurs depended by a strap. And the horn-handled crop 
—once, like the man, quite a smart and jaunty article, now 
like the man, the worse for wear—lay on the chest of 
drawers. . . . 

Beleaguered Paris hungered within her iron girdle, and 
shivered in the Arctic snows of that unkindly year. There 
were pinching famine and nipping cold by-times in the 
cottage by the wheatacres, for all Malvina’s earnings flowed 
down her drunkard’s throat. 

Malvina not being in the remotest sense a member of 
his congregation, the footsteps of the Rector hallowed not 
her threshold, the goloshes of the district-visitor shunned 
the unblest dwelling, and such seasonable doles of beef and 


66 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

coal, tea and sugar and blankets, as came to cheer the 
poorest folk of Tolleymead on festal occasions, were never 
left by kindly hands at Mrs. Braby’s door. Whether she 
would have taken them remains an unsolved question. But 
it might have been that even her pride and sturdy indepen¬ 
dence might have caved before the naked shelf, and the 
hunger of her growing boy. 

There came a day when Stephen’s curls were sheared 
by his mother’s scissors. And the red flannel frock, sub¬ 
sequently destined to do duty as a scarecrow in the garden, 
departed in the wake of the curls. Under Stevey s hun- 
kumed smock now figured a venerable woollen Cardigan, 
and his legs were eclipsed in a cast-off pair of adult hunting- 
cords. Once the property of the sporting tenant of Tolley 
Hall Dairy Farm, and the wheatacres, and bestowed upon 
Malvina, who worked at the Farm, by the farmer’s kindly 

wife. . 

The knees of the cords came down to a pair of thick 
blue yarn stockings, and vanished in the gaping tops of 
clouted ankle-jacks. A Scotch cap with one frayed tail 
completed an ensemble which brought the housewives of 
Tolleymead to their front-doors to look. By the Plough 
Monday of 1871, the local excitement had abated. Paris 
capitulated on the date when Stephen went afield. 

Eighteenpence a week earned tending plough, is some¬ 
thing to keep the wolf from the door and buy bread to stay 
the hunger of a healthy, growing youngster. But when 
the wolf has got inside the door, and occupies the position 
of house-dog, though washed, and clipped and combed, 
and clad in nicely laundered linen, and renovated outer 
garments, he is still the wolf and nothing but the wolf, 
though he answers to another name. . . . 

There came a day when the breakfast-crust had never 
been forthcoming. It was Dinner Time,—and the un¬ 
horsed plough leaned at the side of the furrow, pin-points 
of ice sparkling in the new-turned clay that patched coulter 
and share. The damp left by the ploughman’s palm on 
the stilts was turned to hoar-frost; and the ragged tarpau¬ 
lins that covered the steaming hind-quarters of the power¬ 
ful Shire team, contentedly munching in their nosebags, 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 67 

were frozen as stiff as the armour such horses used to wear 
in War. 

They had begun to plough on the northward edge of the 
sixty-acre, down in a hollow. ... To noon wards, as 
they topped the slope, the wind swept down on them. . . . 
A pinching, nipping, unseen force, scurrying among the 
withered leaves remaining in the hedgerows and the stiff, 
tall weeds on the unploughed land, and droning with a 
high, shrill note, like the driving-belt of a machine. Shud¬ 
dering among the heavy locks shagging the feet of the 
horses; tossing about their manes and tails, clinking the 
iron traces and shaking the swingle-trees; and seeming 
to take a fiendish joy in making Stephen’s chilblains tingle, 
and viciously tweaking his nose and ears. 

Rooks and starlings pecked in the new-turned clay on 
the south-looking sides of the furrows. The ploughman, 
sat in the shelter of the hedge, eating out of a blue basin, 
something that smelt good. . . . And Steve had had noth¬ 
ing at all except a drink of buttermilk saved from over¬ 
night, and a swede that had tumbled off a load, as the cart 
had lumbered past. . . . 

His mother had promised to come to the field and bring 
him some hot dinner. He was hopeful, knowing his Mas¬ 
terpiece would never break her word. Now he saw her 
tall figure coming along the footpath that crossed the 
wheatacres, as he jumped about to warm himself, beating 
his arms, as grown men did, on his narrow, childish chest. 

The heart inside sat down with a bump when he saw 
that Malvina carried nothing. She drew near and towered 
over him, and he looked up in her face. And it was drawn, 
and old and pinched, a mask of tragic anguish. A dead 
face, with nothing alive in it except the tortured eyes. 

“Sonny, I come as I promised yo’. But I ha’ browt 

yo’ Nothing. Theer wer’ no what-” Her voice failed 

her, and her mouth twisted awry: “Th’ mistress up at 
the Dairy she paid me for the work this mornin’. But-” 

Steve guessed at once that the Enemy had taken the 
money away. He had begun a whimper, but he bit it off 
and with an effort swallowed it, inflated his chest with a 
deep breath, and told the heroic lie: 



68 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

“I doan’ care nothin’ wotever as you’ve not brought no 
dinner. I’ve had my dinner long ago, wi’ Mr. Pover there. 
He brazenly jerked a chilblained thumb in the direction of 
the ploughman. “Bacon-dumpling an’ taters, Mr. Pover 
he gi’ me. An’ they was prime.” The water rushed to his 
mouth. ... 

“ ’Twere kind o’ him!” Her face looked less like death 
and her eyes were melting. Kisses were not in common 
use between Malvina and her boy. But he leaped at her now 
as a young dog leaps, and dabbed her cheek with his cold 
little wet nose, as the young dog licks; and in doing this he 
grazed her accidentally,—just as the dog might have done— 
on the upper part of the arm. . . . 

“You bin’ hurted!” For she had caught her breath when 
he had knocked against her. 

“No!” The monosyllable was like the stroke of a 
mellow, deep-toned bell. He urged: 

“But you have. You flinched-like. Did —he do it?” 

“I’ve told yo’ No! Don’t fare to git such notions in yo’r 
head.” 

She pushed his hair from his forehead, with her motherly 
touch, and left him, and went back over the unbroken 
stubbles to the path. As the bullying wind thrust at her 
back, and tugged at her thin garments, Steve saw how she 
had wasted. That was more of the Enemy’s work. Then 
a rough voice hailed him from behind, and he turned from 
staring after her,—and Pover, surely prompted by Stephen’s 
Guardian Angel, gave him a hunk of cold pork-fat and a 
lump of home-made bread. 


3 

The year 1871 went slowly by, and once again it was 
autumn, and Stephen’s birthday came and went, and left 
him twelve years old. He worked afield and was poorly 
fed, and though he sometimes dreamed of flowers, the 
Voices of the Market had ceased calling in his ears. 

They were sorely pinched this Christmas-tide, for Mal¬ 
vina had ceased working at the Dairy Farm, and though 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 69 

she went three days in the week to Mrs. William Tibbitts 
on the Green, Saturday found her earnings short by the 
sum of seven and sixpence. A whole shilling and rather 
less than a penny, off each day. 

The day previous to Christmas Eve, a hawker with a 
pony-barrow came to the cottage with Braby, who had 
met him at ‘The Pure Drop.’ . . . After a little chaffering 
a bargain was struck between them. Braby returned to 
the tavern with money in his pockets, and the purchaser 
began to pack the goods for which he had paid. 

The first of all the household gods from which young 
Stephen suffered parting was the tall oak clock with the 
square brass face, with the moon and the ship at sea, the 
venerable clock behind whose coffin-lid door the late Mrs. 
Susan Parmint, in her neat print gown, and black net cap 
was, to Stephen’s fancy, concealed. 

“Let’s take a squint inside ’er,” said the hawker with 
the hoarseness of his calling, described by himself to 
Malvina as ‘being a bit thick in the clear.’ And on the key 
being reached down from a hiding-place on the top of the 
clock—Stephen had never thought to look there!—the door 
in the case was opened, and beyond a couple of rusty weights 
dangling from a rusty chain—there was nothing inside at 
all. 

In addition to the tall oak clock, the three-cornered china- 
cupboard went away in the hawker’s barrow, with some 
treasures the cupboard had displayed. Namely, two crock¬ 
ery spaniels with red and yellow collars, some glittering 
lustre vases, a pair of old Delft candlesticks, the plate dis¬ 
playing the Duke of Wellington’s portrait in full regimen¬ 
tals, and the other, with the picture of the full-blown pink 
rose. 

“Must they all go, mother ?” Stephen ventured to breathe. 
“Even the plate wi’ th’ rose on it?” 

“Ay. Though us might keep that one. Look yo’ here, 
Mister-” 

“B. Faggis,” the hawker reminded her, deftly twisting a 
rope of straw round the blue Delft candlesticks: “Joram’s 
Road, Lower ’Olloway, Number Sivinty. Where the Old 


70 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Fashioned Wooden Baulks is, what the Wagrants used to 
kip on, in the days when them Rummy old Busters lived 
as made the Antigreeks.” 

“What sort o’ things might they be, making so free 
as to ask yo’?” Malvina queried, still mindful of Stephen’s 
wistful face. ... t 

“The Antigreeks? Why, harticles such as Oil Pictur’s; 
Painted Chaney Vawses, Stone Images, Carved Wood¬ 
works, and Fancy Chests o’ Drawers,” returned Mr. Faggis. 
“Likewise harticles of usefulness, such as Cupboards, Beds, 
Footstools, Chairs and Sofys,—made by them ancient Cus¬ 
tomers as lived Hunderds o’ years ago, an’ turned theirselves 
out such Precious Guys in the ’aberdashery and tailoring 
line. Different built to wot we are they must a’ bin’ to 
wear such toggery, I says—and set or lay in comfort on 
sich chairs an’ sofys and beds! But my Missus thinks— 
and there never was such a Oner for thinkin’ as the 
Missus!—that they got used to ’em by degrees, like the Plank 
Beds in the Jails.” 

“Ay. Being used to different things, I reckon, they 
knowed no difference,” Malvina conceded, handing him 
the plates. 

“You did say as we might keep one,” Stephen shyly re¬ 
minded her, siding close to his mother and plucking at her 
skirt. 

“Look here, young chap,” said B. Faggis, wiping his 
shiny crimson face with the end of a bright silk necker¬ 
chief. “Since you’re so un-common fond of ’em, I’ll make 
you a present of one. Never you mind about your Dad. 
I’ll square with him, I reckons. Say which you sets your 
’art on—Old Nosey or the Flower?” 

“Don’t yo’ be silly, Stevey,” said his mother with tender 
roughness, as Stephen retired shyly into the shelter of her 
skirts. “Speak up an’ thank th’ gentleman!” 

“ ’Cording to what I heerd at the public on the Green 
—me being a stranger to Tolleymead—Kilburn, Edgware, 
Barnet and Watford being my usual Round—Young 
Shaver here has a sight more right to the name of gentle¬ 
man than I ’as,” hinted Faggis, looking sharply from Mal¬ 
vina’s face to Stephen’s and then back again. “How- 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 71 

sumdever,” he added, “that ain’t my affair. Which Plate do 
the Shaver fancy?” 

“The rose,” Stephen whispered. “Please, sir, the plate 
wi’ the rose on it 1” 

“ ’Tis a bit o’ real Staffordshire I had before I married,” 
said Malvina, “as was give me by the same dear friend 
from whom I had yon mug.” She nodded towards the 
mug that bore the flourishing gilt legend, and the design of 
the bridal couple, walking towards the staring scarlet church. 
“Our Stevey, yo’ shall have th’ mug. Say that yo’ thank 
th’ gentleman an’ would liever as he kep’ th’ plate wi’ th’ 
rose, fur which Money ha’ bin’ paid.” 

“But I’d rather hev’ the rosy plate,” Stephen asserted 
boldly. 

“ ’Twere the first thing as he cried for when he beginned 
to take notice-like. An’ now he seems fonder of it nor 
ever,” Malvina explained. “Nor my Master wouldn’t ha’ 
sold it now but fur wanting the money bad-like. But as 
for being beholden to yo’r kindness,” said Malvina, “I doubt 
but if he knowed of it, my Master would object.” 

“You take an’ leave your Master to me. He knows where 
to find me if he wants me, my address being Sivinty Joram’s 
Road, Lower ’Olloway. For there I ’as my Little Place, 
looked after by my Missus,” said B. Faggis, a square-built, 
red-faced, blue-shaven, cheery man in a rabbit-skin cap, a 
blue cloth coat, moleskin kicksies, the kind of drab gaiter 
popularly known as mud-pipes—and boots so blacked that he 
might have been an advertisement for Warren, with the rose, 
thistle and shamrock worked upon the insteps, in an elabo¬ 
rately elegant design. “Second-’and Furniture and Various,” 
continued Mr. Faggis, “Books, China, an’ Antigreeks, 
what you might call a Branch. And Customers accommo¬ 
dated in the Exchanging Line. This here little prad o’ mine 
come to me in that way,” pursued Mr. Faggis, indicating the 
pony. “I swapped a Parlour Sweet for ’im in red moreen 
an’ walnut, and I wouldn’t part with the hanimal for the 
same in hoak an’ plush. And wot’s more, he knows I 
wouldn’t. Don’t you, Smiler ?” 

And he touched his fur cap civilly to Malvina, and poked 
Steve playfully in the ribs with the butt-end of his driving- 


72 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

whip, and tickled up the pony so scientifically with the busi¬ 
ness end of the implement, that Smiler broke into a rattling 
trot and jolted the barrow away. Perhaps it was to drown 
the nagging voice of conscience reproaching him with refer¬ 
ence to the sale of Mrs. Parmint’s clock, to say nothing of 
her corner-cupboard and china, that Braby got furiously 
drunk upon their price that night. So that Steve was 
wakened from sound young sleep somewhere about midnight 
by the Enemy’s heavy, stumbling tread, and shrill alcoholic 
cursings, and, sitting up in his pallet-bed in the angle of the 
thatched roof under the attic window, listened until the 
curses subsided into growls, and Braby had kicked off his 
boots and thrown himself upon the bed. 

Then as Stephen clenched his hands, hatred for the author 
of his being tingling through every cell and nerve of his 
vigorous young frame, there came a step on the ladder by 
which you reached the attic, the square of light that showed 
the edges of the floor-hole that you crept through altered its 
outline, and a well-beloved shadow fell across his little pallet- 
bed. 

His mother’s. 

“Lie yo’ down again, my lamb,” Malvina whispered. 
“Your father’s none too well to-night, so I’ve come a-seeking 
lodging wi’ my lad. No!—I’ll none take th’ coverlet, nor 
yet yo’r blanket,” and as Stephen thrust these things on her, 
her powerful arm reached over him and her maternal hand 
tucked back the thin coverings as before. “I’ve my old cloak 
to roll me in, as has served through many a winter—and I’ll 
lie down beside yo’ as comfurable as may be. . . . Go yo’ 
to sleep, and so will I. Nay—he’s awake an’ moving! I 
mun go to him. Bless yo’, my own lad!” she whispered, and 
vanished down the ladder, leaving Stephen sitting up in bed, 
frowning and clenching his fists. 

When the hateful voice broke out again in a spate of ugly 
objurgations, the boy gave back the man’s abuse with inter¬ 
est, under his breath. . . . But when the sound of hic¬ 
coughed oaths and heavy trampling footsteps was mingled 
with the ugly noise of blows, sometimes falling on senseless 
wood and sometimes on living flesh, Stephen rolled from his 
pallet-bed in the gable of the tiny attic and crawling, in an 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 73 

agony of love and fear, half down the crazy ladder, he saw 
by the light of a flaring dip that had guttered all over the 
candlestick, his mother with dishevelled streaming hair, and 
her nightgown torn so that the sun-brown of her neck 
showed in contrast with the snow of her bosom, shielding 
her face with one upraised arm, whilst with the other she 
warded off the blows of Braby’s battered hunting-crop. 

“Ha’ done!” she kept repeating mechanically as the blows 
fell and fell again, and Steve clung to the ladder like a frozen 
starling on a branch, “Ha" done, Braby! Yo’ll wake the 
boy, screeching like that. Ha’ done wi’ it! Eh, yo* 
men!” . . . 

“Hear her!” cried Braby, who with glaring eyes, and 
mouth expanded in a savage grin, and with an unwholesome 
clammy sweat running down his face and naked chest, pre¬ 
sented a hideous appearance. He lowered the whipstock to 
recover his breath, and went on, speaking between pants 
and gasps, for violent exercise had winded him: “Listen 
to the devoted wife pleading with her tyrant: 'Don't wake 
the hoy!' ” He drew a rattling breath. “ ‘The boy’ is all 
she thinks of. The virtuous Griselda—the chaste spouse 
whose downcast eyes shun men. Why, for a penny Fd have 
the cub down, set him on that chest of drawers and let him 
see the show out. Ay!—and for two crooked pins Fd lead 
you in a halter to Wheatstone Market, Friday, and sell you 
for the highest bid. Aha!—I caught you then!” 

The thong of the crop, adroitly used, had fallen across 
Malvina’s neck, between the ear and shoulder. Her low cry 
wrought on Braby’s torture-lust as spirit poured on flame. 
He fell upon the woman then with such a murderous frenzy, 
that her stout heart fainted at his look, and Stephen shrieked 
in fear. At which outcry the Enemy looked about and with 
a hoarse triumphant scream came charging at the ladder. 
From which, as his weight crashed on it, Stephen fell, and 
knew no more. 

He came, climbing out of bottomless depths, full of dark 
smoke and vapour, back to the consciousness that his face 
and breast were wet and that cold air fanned on him. He 
struggled, and his mother’s arm came comfortingly about 


74 The Pipers of the Market Place 

him, and his mother’s voice assured him that he was quite 
well now. 

Surprised, despite some aches and pains in various parts 
of his anatomy, to hear that he had been otherwise than well, 
Stephen turned his wondering stare upon the face of his 
Masterpiece, who had put on a worn old cotton print gown 
over her night attire and tidied the disordered masses of 
her abundant red-gold hair. She kissed him, and Stephen 
clasped her neck and felt her wince and shudder, and lifted 
his cheek from the cruel red stripe, and saw it—and recol¬ 
lected all. He dropped his arms, and she helped him up, and 
though he felt weak and dizzy, he was quite well as she had 
said—When had she told him wrong? 

“Be it last night?” he faltered, “or else to-morrow morn¬ 
ing ?” 

For though a fresh dip candle flared in the tin candle¬ 
stick upon the table, the window that swung open showed 
pale grey light outside. 

“ Tis morning, nigh,” Malvina said, moving lightly 
hither and thither as she opened drawers and shut them 
again, and rolled and folded certain worn and much-patched 
little garments which Stephen, munching bread and cheese 
set by overnight for his breakfast, recognized as things made 
familiar by faithful daily wear. 

“Be it rainin’ ?” he asked, with a puzzled look. 

“No, ’tis quite fair,” said his mother. 

“I thowt I heerd th’ gully-neck a-snorin’, that were all.” 

Which gully was a drain outside the back door of the 
cottage, communicating by a grating and a length of rusty 
pipe with a culvert at the bottom of the garden. When it 
rained so heavily that the wooden funnel communicating 
with the water-butt overflowed, or the suds of Malvina’s 
weekly wash-tub were emptied down the grating, the gully 
snored and gurgled as Steve heard it gurgling now. 

No!—the snoring came from the bed. With hate and 
horror in his white young face, Stephen looked over his 
shoulder. There lay the Enemy in a drunken sleep, routing 
and grunting like a hog. An Enemy none the less hideous 
and foul that his livid face with its shut and twitching eyes, 
and open mouth gaping angry red in a confusion of un- 




How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 75 

kempt moustache and beard, was topped by a bandage of 
wet roller-towel stained in the folds with blood. . . . 

“He bain’t a-going to git up agin’ an' pitch into both on 
us, be he?” 

To that shuddering question of Braby’s son the naked 
toes of the veinous yellow foot that dangled over the edge 
of the disordered bed twitched as though they meant to 
convey that their owner would have liked to. But the heavy 
snoring that had momentarily checked while something 
wrought and struggled in his yellow, stringy throat (as 
though some of the devils that possessed the man were 
fighting to escape from him) had now begun again. And 
Malvina said, not looking round, but tying a few worn 
articles in a blue-spotted cotton pocket-handkerchief, and 
hunting in a thin old moleskin purse, from which she ex¬ 
tracted a coin: 

“He’ll not wake yet. Eat up yo’r bread an’ drink yo’r 
tea”—cold tea, which she had heated on the ashes of the 
fire in a battered little tin saucepan—“and then come yo’ 
here an’ let me put yo’r Sunday shirt on yo’. An’ yo’r 
clean smock, as both be aired, and fitty for yo’ to wear.” 

So Stephen, shrunken to a little child by her tone and the 
beckon of her finger, gulped his last mouthful and supped 
his last sup, and came and stood by her knee. But the ques¬ 
tion seething in his breast could not be kept from utterance. 
He got out, with his scared blue eyes rolling in the direction 
of the bed: 

“Mother, how did he git hurted like that?” 

Malvina was buttoning the clean Sunday shirt. She got 
an old bone comb out of the table-drawer, took Stephen 
by the chin, combed his rumpled curls, and said as she 
achieved a parting: 

“He run agin’ summat as caught him flush on the end 
o’ th’ chin an’ floored him. That’s no great cut upon his 
head. The table-edge did that. And I reckoned th’ bleed¬ 
ing did him good. Now yo’ll put on yo’r clothes.” She 
went on as Stephen obeyed: “Fur when yo’r Father comes 
to his mind, ’twon’t do fur him to see yo’. Eh, th’ men!” 

With a dreadful sinking underneath the buttons of an 
old sleeved Cardigan waistcoat, a gift of the wife of the 


76 The Pipers of the Market Place 

tenant of Tolley Hall Dairy Farm, Stephen stammered with 
jerking lips: 

“Where—where be I to go? Be you angry wi me, 
Mother?” 

“Do I look like I were angered?” 

Her eyes brimmed over with the words. The slow tears 
fell on the bosom of her old print gown, and now her arms 
were round Stephen, and his own face was wet with them. 
She told him in her deep, soft voice, readying his garments 
as she spoke, with deft maternal touches: 

“Yo’ be my own dear, precious lad, and that yo’ alius will 
be. But yo’r Father-” 

Malvina had not realized that Braby’s son at all resembled 
him. But in the look of bitter hate that the boy now cast 
towards the figure on the bed was stamped Stephen's 
paternity. She said, moving the boy away and steeling her 
great heart to be stern: 

“Yo’r Father be yo’r Father. Yo’, Steve, alius remember 
that unless yo’ wants to be Hammered. Fur, if I Hammered 
him for yo’—and th’ Lord’s my judge that blow I struck 
was to save his doing Murder!—I’d punish yo’ fur going 
agin’ the Word that bids yo’ Honour him.” 

“But when I see him beat you wi’ th’ whip!” Stephen 
gulped out, choking. 

Said Malvina: 

“I’m not the woman I was for strength, there’s no use to 
deny! Yit never was there a minute to-night when yo’r 
Father had the upper hand. ’Twas when yo’ failed down 
th’ ladder and he fared to git a-lamming yo’, that I lost my 
patience wi’ him, and give him Swaffham, as yo’ see. When 
he wakes—and he won’t fur long!—for I mixed him a drink 
to comfort him an’ dropped some Laudanum in it—(out o’ 
his little bottle of drops he takes to make him sleep)—’twill 
be bad fur him to see yo’ here, and bad fur yo’, I reckons. 
So go to Wheelwright Rumbold, as ever’s been a friend to 
us, an’ ask him fur to take yo’ in, an’ let yo’ bide three days.” 

With a throb of joy Stephen gasped: 

“Then you means me to come back again? You bain’t 
a-sending of me away for good?” 

“Never, my darlin’!” 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 77 

He learned how strong those great arms were, as she 
caught him to her heart. 

“No, Stevey dear! Never, my lamb. Tis for yo’r own 
sake I send yo’. Most like your Father’ll ha’ forgot how he 
made out to serve yo’—an’ what I had to do to him—when 
he wakens up again. But supposing not,—it’s best for yo’ 
to be clear out o’ th’ sight on him; I’ll have a better heart, my 
dear, being sure that yo’ be safe.” 

“And you? Will you be safe wi’ him?” 

“Trust me. As safe as churches. Now kiss me and 
take th’ bundle. There’s a clean shirt inside of it an’ a hand- 
kercher for Sunday, which will be Christmas Day, yo’ know, 
to-morrow being Christmas Eve. Come back the night o’ 
Boxing Day, that being Monday. I’d saved this shilling for 
yo’r Christmas box. Put it in yo’r pocket!” 

Stephen already owned a penny, and here was a whole 
shilling to lavish. He said, glowing with a project sprung 
from this access of affluence, and with sweet music, long un¬ 
heard, sounding in his boyish ears: 

“Mother, supposin’ I didn’ go away to Mr. Wheelwright 
Rumbold. Jest think how tidy it would be if I wented up 
to London instid ?” 

“All by yo’rself, so litt’l as ye be, an’ never havin’ set 
foot theer. Yo’d be lost!” Her bosom stirred with a faint 
breath of dismay. 

“I wouldn’ git lost.” Stephen’s eyes were bright, and his 
look alert and confident. 

“But three whole days—an’ you wi’ nowt in yo’r pocket 
but a shillin’?” she said. “How would I close my eyes o’ 
nights wi’ you a-clemmin’ in th’ streets? They black, bad 
streets. Yo’r Father be no better since he knowed them. 
London, yo’ say! What put th’ notion o’ London in yo’r 
head ?” 

“I dunno. But I wants to see it. Don’t Queen Victoria 
live theer ? An’ ain’t th’ Markits theer to see, the Borough 
an’ Covent Garden ’fore all? Wi’ all the holly an’ mistletoe, 
an’ oranges an’ nuts an’ lemons. . . . An’ hot-’us flowers. 
Roses—O my!” He snuffed»them in the air. 

“Let me think a minute!” Malvina said. As she thought, 
the flowers were calling: “You who love us—you who love 


78 The Pipers of the Market Place 

us, come, come and play!” But Steve’s mother heard 
nothing but the snoring from the bed, as she weighed the 
risks and the advantages. ... If Stephen sought asylum 
under Rumbold’s roof, Rumbold would never by look or 
word betray the dire necessity that sent the boy thither. But 
Tolleymead gossips would whisper and pry, and Braby’s 
liquor would betray more. And soon his ill-usage of his 
wife and child would be common talk for all. Eh, the 
men! ... 

“If yo’ be sure yo’ll come to no harm, nor do naught 
as I’ve forbid yo’-” 

“I promise not to do no harm, nor nothing as you’ve 
ferbid!” 

Stephen licked the forefinger of his right hand and gave 
a preparatory flourish of the digit. . . . 

“This wet an’ this dry—Cut my throat if I tell a lie !” 

“You stop! I don’t want none o’ that theer nasty wicked 
rubbish. Yo’ gi’ me yo’r promise—honest—an’ go wheer 
| yo’ will.” 

' “I promise Honest—an’ I’ll be back by supper-time o’ 

| Monday.” 

“Then may Him as they tell of in the Good Book, as were 
nowt but a little naked child wi’ no shelter but a stable, on 
the first Christmas Eve as iver dawned upon th’ world, take 
care o’ my poor wandering lad and bring him back o’ Mon¬ 
day. Yo’r Father’s stirrin’ in his sleep. God keep yo’ 
safe, my dear!” 

She wound Steve’s thin old comforter about his neck, 
and put on his cap and kissed him before she almost noise¬ 
lessly unlocked the door. And then—he was out in the 
grey-white dawn that stung and bit and nipped him, and 
the door shut, and the key turned and he heard her put up 
the bar. He might have heard her sob, perhaps, if he had 
paused to listen, but the pipers of the Market were piping, 
thin, sweet and far away. As they had piped to Stephen be¬ 
fore the Shadow fell, he heard them; and knew that he was 
free at last to answer to their call. 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 79 
4 

The cold of the December dawn bit you like a weasel, and 
it had rained early in the night, and then set in to freeze. 
So that a thin film of ice rendered the ground slippery, and 
icicles hung from the cottage eaves and the rose-bush by 
the door. 

Tolleymead Church clock, deep-mouthed as a blood-hound 
they kept chained in the Hall stable-yard, struck twelve 
strokes and the quarter; and it was the morning of Christmas 
Eve. And the Moon, very high and bright and small, was 
sailing away southwards, and a wonderfully sparkling blue- 
green star hung low in the eastward sky. 

Perhaps it was the Star that had led Three Wise Men 
to the Stable at Bethlehem, thought Stephen, remembering 
the story his mother had read him from the Book, as he 
drove his cold fists deeply into his breeches , pockets, and 
digging his square young chin well down inside his ancient 
muffler, passed through the little frosty gate of Malvina's 
wedge of front garden, and stepped upon the cartway leading 
out on the Tolley Brook Road. 

His breath as it went steaming up through the meshes of 
old red woollen—the runnel trickling beside the road under 
its cover of ice, knew no more of their destination than 
Stephen Braby. The one rose skywards, the other trickled 
towards the agglomeration of mounds of earth, piles of 
broken brickbats and stacks of tarry timber, dignified by the 
designation of The Railway Station Works. 

For the Great Northern Railway, now running through 
the middle of the County, was taking measures to establish 
a Junction at High Marnet presently. 

Some views in the direction of a Station at Tolleymead 
had borne fruit in an increased demand for beer at the 
village public-houses, on the part of certain large men in 
fur caps or sou’westers, pilot-coats and moleskins, armed 
with heavy bright shovels and weighted picks. Volcanic 
upheavals of gravel and clay, deposits of tarred sleepers 
and lengths of rusty iron, had resulted in a single line to 
the Branch Works at Edgware, up and down which small 
goods-engines panted at intervals, dragging loads of iron 


80 The Pipers of the Market Place 

and bricks and stone. At six in the winter mornings it 
brought the large men to Tolleymead, and punctually at five 
in the afternoon carried them away. In the interval between 
these journeys, the large men in moleskins propelled them¬ 
selves up and down the line in trolleys, with iron-shod poles. 

Stephen’s hobnails clinked upon the Tolley Brook Road 
in the direction of the New Railway Station Works.. Pres¬ 
ently his paces quickened to a trot. Soon, turning off 
the Tolley Brook Road into a footpath traversing meadows, 
there rose up the tall attenuated shape of a crane, worked 
by a donkey-engine, sticking up over some huge, frosty, 
shapeless mounds of gravel and brickbats and stone. 
Amongst these, the white-rimed tarpaulin roof of the 
night-watchman’s shelter struck a note of human company, 
and the rosy glow from a brazier, more than hinted at 
warmth. 

Something more—the unmistakable aroma of boiling 
coffee,—plucked at Stephen’s chilly little nose, and a gruff 
laugh, issuing from unknown subterranean regions, made 
him nearly jump out of his boots. 

Cautiously approaching round the comer of a mountain 
of wheelbarrows, he found the night-watchman of the 
Works, whose business it was to guard the mountain of 
wheelbarrows aforesaid, the donkey-engine and the crane, 
a stack of tarry sleepers and a heap of rusty metals, from 
the dishonesty that prowls by night. As he squatted on the 
folded sack at the door of his shelter, basking in the warmth 
of his brazier, talking in growling undertones with an un¬ 
official assistant, and keeping an eye on a tin coffee-pot that 
sat upon the blazing coals, with a woman’s shoulder-shawl 
tied about his head to keep off the night-frosts, and an 
empty sack or so secured by strings about his shoulders, it 
struck Stephen that he would like to be the Watchman of a 
Works. And creeping a little nearer, not with the design 
of eavesdropping, but to snatch a whiff of the fire, he heard, 
mingled with the hoarse talk of the watchman and his crony, 
a heavy sound of snoring, that was like the Enemy’s. . . . 

“An’ he stays here, lodgin’ o’ nights-” said the watch¬ 

man’s crony hoarsely. 

“Not so fur away but ye kin hear him snorin’ if ye’d 






How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 81 

a mind,” the watchman responded, glancing over his shoulder 
into the pitch-black depths of his tarpaulin shelter, from 
which undoubtedly issued the snores. Not quite like the 
Enemy’s, Stephen decided, as the firelight lured him closer 
yet, and the coffee-pot bubbled on the bright coals. Stronger, 
deeper; without chokes and gurgles; the healthy snoring of 
a lusty, powerful man. 

‘‘Would ye say,” the watchman’s mate spoke lower, 
acting possibly on a hinted warning, “wimmen being wot 
wimmen are—as this woman tempts him on?” 

“Why, seeing Mackilliveray hisself complains as wot she 
never looks at him-” the official watchman was begin¬ 

ning, when, pausing to spit and leaning aside for this pur¬ 
pose, he saw Stephen and called out in a terrible voice: “Now 
then, who are you?” 

“Nobody, please, sir,” piped Stephen, chafing his tingling 
. nose and ears with the ends of his woollen comforter. “Only 
a boy, sir!” 

“ ’Spectable byes,” said the watchman’s mate forcibly, 
“be at this hower asleep abed.” 

“Supposin’ they ’as beds to be in,” said the official watch¬ 
man, guardedly. “If they’re young tramps or infant prigs, 
they prowls an’ lurks like you.” 

“Please, sir, the fire looked so warm, I couldn’t keep 
from nigh it,” pleaded Stephen, gloating over the brazier 
as he spoke. And he looked so very cold a boy that the 
watchman’s heart relented. 

“Sit down a bit and warm yerself, then,” he said less 
roughly, and tossed a dilapidated bit of sacking over to the 
boy. He even took up a burned old poker that lay near, 
and roused up the fire, saying, “And I wouldn’t wonder 
but by and by I might spare ye a sup o’ corfee,” jerking 
his thumb at the bubbling pot exhaling the alluring smell. 

Coffee!—Stephen settled down like a stray terrier with 
one eye on the red-hot brazier, and the other on the hospitable 
watchman, and wished that his Masterpiece could know 
of his good luck. He was sleepy and blinked like a young 
owl, as he squatted, closely hugging his knees, in the warmth 
of the fire; and presently he propped his chin upon the knees, 
for he began to nod. And the voices of the two old men 1 



82 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

came in between whiffs of slumber. And Mackilliveray 
and the woman who could not be got to look at Mackilliveray 
—came back into the talk again. 

“So this yere man—Mackilliveray, and where he got 
sich an oncommon queer name I don’t suppose you could 
tell me,” recommenced the watchman’s crony presently; so 
this here Mackilliveray—having clapped eyes for the first 
time on the fine young female you’ve named to me—— 

“Was a year agone last November at ‘The Pure Drop, 
Tolleymead Green. On the werry night her good-for- 

naught of a husband he come home again-” 

“An’ knowin’ her by the gen’ral woice to be a vartuous 
young female,” continued the crony, rapping out his pipe, 
“he yit can’t drive her out of his head, not, as he ought, 
by takin’ up some willin’ young ’oman; nor by shiftin’ to 
another road-gang an’ goin’ North for a change, but 
hangs about, a-follering her with his greedy eyes, in the 
neighbourhood o’ wheer she’s workin, an findin that no 
good at all for his Bad purpose!—scrapes acquaintance with 
the poor weak sot as she’s had the misfortiff to marry 
and keeps him soakin’ at th’ tavern night after night.” 

“Mebbe he thinks to bring her down to beggin’ and 
prayin’.” The watchman struck a sulphur match and lighted 
his pipe anew. “ ‘Mister, doan’t ye lead my man into 
’dulging of his weakness. He be a drunkard well I knows, 
but he’s worse since he knowed you!’ And though she puts 
up with her ’ard fate, and never passes word wi’ him, this 

’ere Mackilliveray, being of a sangewine natur’-” 

“Not havin’ ’ad sim’lar advantages to yourself, eddica- 
tionally speakin’,” said the watchman’s mate, “might I 
harsk you wot you means by sangew-ine ?” 

“A sangew-ine man,” said the watchman, “is a bloke so 
outrageous ’opeful, that he putts a double geranium in the 
front parler winder before he’s even started to dig the foun¬ 
dations of his house.” 

“An’ a corn-founded old Magpie,” said a deep bass voice, 
unexpectedly rumbling out of the darkness behind the watch¬ 
man, from whence the heavy snoring no longer came, “is the 
man who lets his roof to you, to snatch a wink o’ sleep 




How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 83 

under,—and sets at the door and chatters so as you can’t 
git none!” 

“No offence to you, mate.” The watchman moved his 
body out of the entrance of the shelter, as a man much 
bulkier than himself crept out on hands and knees. “A word 
from you ’ud have stopped my jaw. Turn in again and 
chance it. You won't have furder grounds, I lay, for lodgin' 
a complaint.” 

“No, burn my eyes! I've had enough,” said the person 
called Mackilliveray, whom, as he emerged into the ruddy 
glow thrown by the fire in the brazier, Stephen recognized 
as the burly, red-headed navvy who had been drinking at 
‘The Pure Drop' on the night when the Enemy came home. 

“Take you my place on these here sacks, I know where 
to find me others, while I git out some cups an’ things I’ve 
stowed away in there. The coffee’s biled this long time,” 
said the watchman hospitably, the hint of refreshment 
proving so far acceptable to his aggrieved lodger that he 
lumbered down upon the folded sacks without another word. 

The deep-mouthed clock of Tolleymead Church bayed 
one o’clock and the half-hour, while the watchman clinked 
crockery in the shelter, and his mate smoked silently on. 
Stars twinkled only faintly now, the moon was no more 
visible. . . . Chill, numbing blankets of fog closed in 
about the tarpaulin-covered hill of wheelbarrows, the 
mounds that kept the draught away, the shelter that was like 
a cave, and the group about the fire. 

Shadows were swallowed up as in a yawning gulf of black¬ 
ness. Bodies were seen by spurts and flares of light from 
the blazing coals. Faces were demoniacally red, with 
shadows thrown all upwards. Hands were dyed as though 
newly drawn from pails in which a pig has bled. The 
whole scene was so decidedly suggestive of Sea Rovers en¬ 
gaged in an orgy, that Stephen could only hug his knees 
and chuckle to himself. 

Mackilliveray had stepped into the part of Captain of 
the Sea Rovers, by reason of his size, and flaming hair, 
and the scowl upon his heavy face. He had sat where he 
had squatted down, leaning against the watchman’s shack, 


84 The Pipers of the Market Place 

staring with small, fierce, light-hued eyes, lashed with hairs 
as red as the hairs upon his head and the great bare arms 
folded upon his breast, directly at the fire. 

Though, for all the fire could do—it was cold, and the 
fog had a numbing bite of its own for unguarded human ex¬ 
tremities—Mackilliveray seemed unconscious that the 
weather was severe. His rough pilot-coat was tied about 
his neck by the two sleeves, carelessly, so that a headless 
comrade might have been behind him, hugging him; and 
he wore no scarf or muffler despite the severity of the 
weather, but only a white-spotted red cotton handkerchief 
knotted about his brawny neck, with its ends hanging over 
his blue ticking shirt and ending in his moleskin vest. De¬ 
cidedly Mackilliveray was proper tough, Stephen decided. 
And he was glad, your true Rover being a scorner of the ele¬ 
ments. 

The watchman came clinking out of his cave with two 
cups and a tin mug, a bag of brown sugar, a great square 
block of currant-cake wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, 
and an old table-knife to cut it with, which he wiped upon 
his sleeve. He dispensed cake in thick wedges, with liberally 
sweetened coffee to every one, including Stephen, who grate¬ 
fully drank his portion from a jam-pot, chipped but clean. 
No one spoke during the repast, and the coffee-pot had 
yielded up its final drops, when, spurred by a sudden in¬ 
spiration, the giver of the feast, shaking up the sugar and 
grounds in his mug, proposed a toast to the company. 

“ ’Ear-’ear!” applauded the watchman’s mate. 

“This being Christmas Eve,” said the watchman, “and 
us gathered ’ere in a friendly way, though it has come about 
by chance-like, I’ll take it on me to perpose wot you might 
call a Seasonable Sentiment.” 

“ ’Ear-’ear!” acclaimed the watchman’s mate. 

“Anker!” cried Stephen, who had heard toasts given at 
‘The Pure Drop.’ 

“Shove on!” growled Mackilliveray, on whose surliness 
the inward exhibition of coffee and currant-cake seemed to 
have had no mollifying influence. 

“Here’s to our Noble Selves!” proposed the watchman, 
shaking up the grounds and sugar; “May the next Christ- 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 85 

mas Eve, when it comes round, find us no Worse off than 
we are now, and wi’ Better things set down to our account 
than stands wrote in the Book this day.” 

’Ear!” acclaimed the crony, without enthusiasm. 

“Anker!” cried Stephen, loyally, pounding the empty 
jam-pot upon the frozen ground. 

. “Jigger me if I call that a toast,” complained Mac- 
killiveray sulkily. “Burn my eyes if a toast of that natur’ 
is worth washin’ down wi’ catlap! Could I be worse off 
than I am now? No, by the great Lord Harry! Wouldn’ 
I be a happier man to-day, if I’d bin worse than I be?” 
With an angry gesture of his great rough hands he tossed 
the liquid left in his cup upon the glowing coals of the 
brazier, which sent out clouds of cindery steam, full in the 
face of the speaker, and hissed as though he had been no 
less than the popular villain of a play. 

“There, there. Ye don’t mean that, ye know,” said the 
watchman pacifically. “Gi’ me the cups to pack away in 
my old missus’s basket, and get inside, and have your sleep. 
I’ll not disturb ye more. I’m for a nap myself, by way o’ 
speakin’.” 

“I’ve told ye as I can’t sleep. Why d’ye shake yer cussed 
old ’ead, much as to ask wot prewents me ? Why don’t I— 
as your mate here said while back ?—why don’t I get me an 
onwed lass, a willin’, likely mawther—or take on wi’ 
another Road Gang, and go for a change up North ? Work’s 
plentiful, and chaps as strong as me don’t grow on every 
blackberry-bush. That bein’ allowed, why the Devil don’t I 
go ? The answer’s fur the axin’. Fur that a woman holds 
me, an’ wonnot let me free o’ her!” said Mackilliveray. 

“You’ve told me ’fore my mate Callis here”—the watch¬ 
man jerked his ear towards his friend—“as how she won’t 
let go o’ ye. But you’ve told me times an’ agin’ ’fore now— 
as how when you follered of her up,—she’d have nowt to 
do wi’ ye!” 

“Well, burn me if I didna’ tell you true. I did foiler her 
up, an’ she wouldn’ have nort to do wi’ me.” 

“My blessed days!” The watchman spat into the ashes 
underneath the brazier. “What sort of a life is it for a 
grown man, caterwauling after a married woman? ‘No,’—■ 


86 The Pipers of the Market Place 

she says, and a fool could tell that once ‘No’ from her means 
‘Never!’ Then—her answer bein’ such, why doan’t ye up 

an’ quit?” u 

Mackilliveray thrust out his jaw and stared angrily at the 
smoking fire. An ugly pallor had usurped the florid colour 
on his bulldog countenance. 

“A man”—the whites of his pale light eyes were reddened 
in an ugly fashion, and the corded muscles of his bull-neck 
and the bared arms folded over his chest stood out in 
swollen knots—“a man as had set his all on ‘Ay,’ so that 
Life meant nort wi’out it,—might be drove into takin’^No’ 
fur ‘Ay,’ come the chance fur which that man ud swing. 

“Tut-tut!” The watchman made the noise by which a 
nurse rebukes the naughtiness of an infant. “That sort o 
talk’s no good at all. ’Tis not fur decent men, butjfcrimmer- 
nals. Besides, the woman can use her hands better than 
some backed fighters in th’ Ring. She’d kill you, or she d 
kill herself, before she’d let you come a-nigh her. Tut-tut! 
Lucky there’s none but my mate and me to hear you talk that 
Newgit way. If you’d be her friend—and your own friend 
too, leave her be, an’ quit the neighbourhood.’’ 

“Leave her be,” said Mackilliveray, thrusting his jaw 
still further out, and savagely scowling. “Leave her with 
the soaking sot that ill-uses her now, and’ll one day up an’ 
murder her. Burn my eyes, if he hevn’t bragged up to ‘The 
Pure Drop’ times an’ again o’ how he gin it her! Hanna I 
heerd him wi’ these ears? Ten—twenty times I have, till 
I wur fain to twist his neck, fur the misgot tyke he be!” 

“Well, if he do misuse the woman, she can fend for her¬ 
self,” said the watchman. “He’d be a rotten stick in her 
grip—that drinkin’ feller would.” 

Stephen was reminded of the Enemy, and sickened at the 
thought of him. And then he jumped—meeting across the 
fire Mackilliveray’s bloodshot stare. 

“Why, jigger my soul and burn my eyes if that’s not 
Braby’s boy!” said Mackilliveray, savagely intensifying the 
red-veined stare. 

“Boy,” echoed the watchman, who, it seemed, had for¬ 
gotten that Stephen was present. “Sure-ly there were a 
boy. Ah, theer he be. You boy, what be your name, an’ 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 87 

where do you live to? Speak up, and mind you tells the 
truth” 

“My name be Stephen Braby, an' I live up to th’ Tolley 
Farm wheatacres. In Mrs. Parmint’s cottage, that’s Grower 
Grundall’s now.” 

Stephen was not afraid of the watchman, who had treated 
him hospitably, though he cherished grave doubts of Mac- 
killiveray, and shrank from the other man. 

“Spoke like a warrior bold,” said the watchman approv¬ 
ingly. “And where was you a-going so early in th’ day?” 

“To London, please,” returned Stephen, thrilling de¬ 
liciously, “if so be’s I could git a lift on a trolley goin’ up 
to the Works.” 

“And how d’ye mean to pay fur th’ lift?” growled Mac- 
killiveray, scowling at him. 

“My mother she giv’ me a shillin’-” began Stephen, 

and stopped there. 

“Show it here!” said Mackilliveray with really ferocious 
energy. Adding as Stephen rummaged in a pocket of the 
old cord breeches, and presently displayed the coin in a re¬ 
luctant palm: “Pass it over. Put it in my hand. Burn 
my eyes and jigger me! D’ye think I’m goin’ to rob ye? 
Sithy now, young narbor,” as Stephen unwillingly parted, 
“this heer shillin’ o’ yourn be a bad ’un. I’ll gi’ ye a good 
’un in exchange.” 

“My mother give me that there, an’ I knows it bain’t a 
bad ’un,” declared Stephen stoutly, though his heart was in 
his boots. 

“So you says,” growled Mackilliveray, feigning to bite 
the coin. “Sithy, I’ll gi’ ye another bob, an’ a tanner instead 
o’ this shillin’. Fur I’ve got a fancy to hev it fur a keep¬ 
sake, d’ye see? Woolst strike han’s on th’ bargain an’ take 
th’ brass, an’ what’s more, a lift as fur as Lunnun? Say th’ 
word, narbor, an’ ye shall go in th’ tender long o’ me.” 

“I call that fair and more than,” said the watchman’s 
crony admiringly. 

“It depends,” said the watchman cautiously, “on what 
the boy decides. What do you say, boy? Will you take 
eighteenpence and a lift on the road to London in exchange 
for this here coin as this mate o’ mine fancies so ?” 


88 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Beset with doubts as to the good he should reap from the 
suggested bargain, Stephen nodded with the tears in his 
eyes, and the navvy tossed over the eighteenpence, saying 
that he would now take the watchman’s advice and try for 
another snooze. 

Stephen would have liked to run away when the im¬ 
pounder of his shilling rose up and plunged back into the 
shelter, but that the watchman threw a shovelful of coals 
upon the fire, and that the frosty fog seemed denser and 
more chill. Besides, his own eyes were closing, in spite of 
his resistance, and even as the watchman, with a bad pre¬ 
tence at roughness, threw a ragged horse-rug over him, he 
coiled down near the brazier and fell fast asleep. 

5 

When Stephen wakened and sat up, rubbing his eyes 
open, the tips of his eyelashes were curiously stiff, and the 
edges of the sack beneath him, the old horse-rug that had 
covered him, the mounds about and the tarpaulins protecting 
the pile of barrows and forming the watchman’s shelter, 
were thickly coated with snow-white, glittering frost. He 
got to his feet, and stamped about to warm those numbed 
extremities, and climbing a heap of sparkling sand, saw the 
Sun, all fiery crimson, rise through the fogs that hid Ed¬ 
monton Marshes, and hugged himself because he was alive 
in such a glorious world. 

The fear and anger of overnight were no longer vivid in 
his memory, and his doubts of Mackilliveray melted like the 
hoar-frost where the sun-rays shone most bright. Even 
when that dour personage came swearing out of the shelter 
on the heels of its legitimate owner, whose crony had unac¬ 
countably vanished, Stephen was ready to credit him with 
the possession of an amiable nature, soured by the inexpli¬ 
cable ill-usage of the woman who hadn’t a name. 

They broke their fast on a hunch of bread-and-dripping, 
and tea made in the coffee-pot, which tasted curiously, and 
when six o’clock struck from Tolleymead Church tower, 
and everything eatable had vanished, Mackilliveray borrowed 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 89 

a dingy towel and a bit of yellow soap from the watchman, 
drew water in a bucket from a standpipe near, and went in 
for what he called a sloosh. 

Having washed in the middle of the previous night, 
Stephen felt no desire to imitate him, but watched the hulk¬ 
ing fellow as he stripped to the waist, and dipped and scoured 
and rinsed. 

When he had finished using the dingy towel as a combined 
sponge and wash-rag and dried himself on his ticking shirt 
and put it on again, he cleaned his teeth by applying with 
his thumb a pinch of powdered brick-dust; rinsed his mouth, 
arranged his bright red hair with a couple of inches of 
broken comb produced from his waistcoat pocket; and 
resuming his waistcoat and retying his neckerchief, 
assumed his pilot-coat, topped himself with a fur cap, and 
dragging a bundle of oilskins and tools and a rush-basket 
from the shelter, inquired of its hospitable owner how 
much there was to pay. 

“Fur I’s bided here for a full week past, yettin’ an’ drinkin’ 
o’ your victuals,” said Mackilliveray, “an’ sleepin’ in your 
bunk when sleep wur to be got. Will six and sixpence do?” 

“ ’Tis too much,” protested the watchman. “Call it four 
bob an' done with it. I’m satisfied, so long as you be.” 

“Keep the ’arf-bull fur some good advice o’ yours, an' 
your mate’s,” said Mackilliveray, in his surly way, and 
motioning the proffered money back. “Which advice I be 
a-going to take before th’ day be older.” 

“Bean’t you a-going to work th’ half-day?” asked the 
watchman curiously. 

“No!” returned Mackilliveray. “Burn me if I be!” 

As he said this, stamping his heavy nailed boot on the 
ground, so that sparks flew up from the contact, and 
lowering his red head and glared out of his red-veined eyes, 
puffing clouds of frosty breath out of his nostrils, he was 
more like an angry bull than a man, to Stephen’s revolted 
mind. Now he went on, in his thick deep voice: 

“My mind’s made up to clear out o’ this place before she 
drives me wuddy. Sithy!—when th’ men cooms down th’ 
line, I’m going back in th’ truck. An’ I’ll speak to th’ 


90 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Superintendent of th’ Branch Line Works an’ git transferred 
up North’ard. An’ theer I’ll stay. Onless she tolls me 
back-” 

“How would a woman toll ye back as never looks nor 
speaks to ye ?” 

“Onless I git tolled back-along by the thought of her hate 
an’ scorn o’ me.” Mackilliveray’s pale eyes were now 
crimson in the whites, and he emphasized his words by 
pounding downward blows, as though he held a rammer 
in his clenched right hand, or were wielding a pile-driver’s 
maul. “And if I be-” He struck again. 

“But ye won’t be,” said the watchman. “No, boy, no! 
Put yer copper up.” For Stephen had twitched at his oil¬ 
skin cape, and slipped a penny in his hand. “If I take from 
this mate for what he’ve had, theer’s nothin’ to pay fer 
you, boy.” 

An engine whistled, and round the bend of the line came a 
little locomotive, pulling a tender and a truck crammed full 
of lusty pilot-coated men. They began to spill out all over 
the line before the engine came to a standstill, calling out in 
gruff or cheery tones to the watchman and their mate: 

“How goes it, wi’ you, Mack, old lad? What weather 
did ye make last night, mate ?” 

To these and other greetings Mackilliveray deigned no 
reply. He had clambered to the top of a mound of soil, 
and was staring under his levelled hand, steadily towards 
the wheatacres. He plucked off his cap and swung it in his 
great hand as though he took leave of some one, and the 
gesture, though it was clumsy enough, had a certain dignity. 

Then he came lumbering down, and returned his com¬ 
rades’ salutations; and exchanged a rough grip of the hand 
with some, as though he were saying good-bye. And then 
he went over to the engine, and, leaning on its rusty flank 
as though it had been a pony, exchanged some words in an 
undertone with the smutty driver in the cab. Then he 
glanced round at Stephen, and nodded at the truck signifi¬ 
cantly; and Stephen grabbed his bundle and joined him with 
a thumping heart. 

“No load to deliver ’fore Toosday along o’ the holidays. 
Goin’ to back her back straightways,” he heard from the 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 91 

smutty man. “When the men knocks orf at twelve o’clock, 
they’ll run theirselves up in the trolley. Can’t have no 
bis’ness breakin’ in on my Christmiss ’oliday. Could you, 
Alf ?” 

Alf, who was an even smuttier man, grunted: 

“Not by no means!” And the little engine confirmed him 
by snorting steam and cinders, and butting the tender 
violently backwards against the truck. Then Mackilliveray 
heaved his pack into the truck, and swung his great body 
after, and Stephen, with his little bundle, clambered after 
him. 

And then—with a terrific triple bump and a shriek from 
the little engine—they were off, and Tolleymead was sliding 
away, and Stephen’s eyes were wet. For never before in 
his twelve years of life had he parted from his Master¬ 
piece. . . . 

“What’s that theer water on yer face?” demanded Mac¬ 
killiveray. 

“Nothin,’ sir,” said Stephen, smearing his sleeve across 
his eyes, and swallowing, “but that I some’ow bin an’ got 
a cinder in me eye.” 

“If I thowt as I’d took fur company a Sniveller,” said 
Mackilliveray, “jigger me but I’d take an’ heave him out 
fur Ballast on th’ line. You got a Father, han’t yer ? Speak 
up, young narbor!” 

Stephen timidly owned to possessing the relative named. 

“An’ likeways you got a Mother?” Mackilliveray was 
sitting on the floor of the truck, well out of the smoke and 
cinders, lolling back against his bundle, with his long legs at 
full stretch. “Would she be sorry to lose ye?” he asked, 
filling a blackened clay pipe with chopped-up twist tobacco. 

Stephen said with a full heart: “Yes, sir, I reckon she 
would!” 

“Then if you hanna’ better wits than to sit as I see you 
on th’ truck-ledge, ye’ll topple out an’ mash yer skull, an’ 
be carried home to her dead! What business d ye foller ? 
inquired Mackilliveray, smoking. 

“I tends to plough,” began Stephen, “an’ when there 
bain’t no ploughin’, I wids, or scares th’ birds.” 

He had squatted down obediently on the floor of the 


92 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

truck, in the corner most remote from his companion, of 
whom his overnight’s distrust had vividly revived. 

“So then you got no work jus’ now ?” asked Mackilliveray, 
smoking and s'pitting. 

“No, sir.” 

“What mought yer Father do fur a livin’, young narbor ? 
Hay?” 

“Nothin/ sir.” 

Mackilliveray rumbled deep in his throat, and if the sound 
meant laughter, the expression on his sullen face was not to 
correspond. 

“Then yer Mother’s workin’ fur ye all?” 

“Yes, sir,” said innocent Stephen, “up to the Tolley Hall 
Dairy Farm most days in th’ week. Though she”—he felt 
as though the navvy’s heavy stare dragged the answer out of 
him—“though she ain’t workin’ at the Dairy now.” 

“She’s lost her job—eh ?” 

Something rumbled deep in Mackilliveray’s throat, and 
his red-veined, light eyes glittered. They were the colour 
of pale flint, or bottle-glass of yellowish-brown. 

“Lost her job at th’ Dairy, d’ye say?” 

Stephen nodded assentingly. 

“Had words wi’ th’ missus?” asked Mackilliveray, “or 
summat like to that ?” 

“Th’ mistress she were wapsey, sir.” Stephen was piec¬ 
ing odd scraps of talk, overheard at times, together, con¬ 
scious, even as he pieced, that to piece and tell was wrong. 
“I dunno why!” 

“I’ll tell ye! . . .” The rumbling sound in Mackil¬ 
liveray’s throat came again. “ ’Twere like this. Th’ old 
mawther she spited of the young one, along o’ the Man as 
was waitin’ outside the cowyard gate. The Man as stud 
theer in th’ mornin’ when th’ cows they be druv’ to th’ 
milk-sheds. An’ the Man as stud theer in th’ evenin’, when 
they drives of ’em in agen. Th’ old mawther she fared to 
be jealous along o’ that Man, as I reckins. Her time be 
gon’ past fur any chap to dangle an’ gawp at she.” 

He rumbled deep in his throat again and relapsed into 
silence; nor did he aught but smoke and spit from then 
until the journey’s end. Which came, despite Stephen’s 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 93 

acute distaste for Mackilliveray’s conversation and com¬ 
pany, before the boy had had enough of his first journey 
by rail. 

It drew near half-past six o’clock as they joggled towards 
Finchley, leaving strings of market-gardeners’ carts piled 
high with crates of mistletoe and scarlet-berried holly, and 
bundles of ivy and little firs for Christmas trees, and great 
waggons laden with vegetables, and covered vans carrying 
under their tilts boxes of fruits and flowers, lumbering be¬ 
hind on the great North Road beside which the truck-line 
ran. 

And now the little rusty engine was butting them into 
Finchley, the Tolley Brook, to Stephen’s surprise, having 
attended them all the way. And the wild conglomeration of 
raw ballast-track and rusty rail, upheaved Middlesex clay 
and building-stuff, ended in the smug neatness of Finchley 
Station and the well-ordered traffic of the Edgware 
Branch Line. 

There was a raw new building of yellow brick roughly 
enclosed within a whitewashed hoarding, advertising itself 
by a big painted board as the Head Office of the New Rail¬ 
way Works. And gangs of men in fur caps, pilot-coats, and 
moleskins were gathered outside the hoarding, staring at the 
bills and coloured posters that relieved its deadly ugliness, 
or pouring in and out of a gateway that stood open in the 
whitewashed fence. 

The bumpy track ended near this gate in a rusty pair 
of buffers, against which the rusty little engine spitefully 
bumped the truck. Having done this, it was uncoupled, and 
after considerable shunting, brought up in the shadow of a 
water-tank elevated on four wooden legs. 

“Wheer did ye say ye was a-going—eh, young narbor?” 

Stephen, in the act of scrambling down, was arrested by 
a heavy hand that gripped him by the shoulder, and thus 
questioned by Mackilliveray, who already stood upon the 
track. He answered: 

“To Cov’n Garden Markit, sir.” 

“ ’Tis a fairish stretch for longer legs than youm, young 
narbor.” Again came that queer rumbling deep in Mackil¬ 
liveray’s throat. “Were yer Mother to meet ye theer ?” 


94 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“No, sir,” said Stephen. . 

“Can ye mind ye o’ summat to say to her whemver you 

sees her next?” 

“Yes sir!” 

“Then let you tell her this from me.” The hand weighed 
heavy as iron. “The Man as stood nigh th’ cowyard gate 
have gone erway fur good. D’ye mind me? Gone away 

fur good!’ ” . . . - 

Stephen nodded, and the crushing weight was lifted, and 
Mackilliveray passed through the open gate and was 
swallowed in a crowd of men. 


6 

To get back to the Great North Road again and strike 
out for Highgate was what Stephen had settled in his mind 
would be the thing to do. For, following the vans and 
waggons and carts and barrows drawn by ponies and 
donkeys, all bound for Covent Garden Market (or so it 
seemed to Stephen)—following these, you were bound in 
the end to reach the longed-for bourne. 

Trains were quick things to take you there, in a joggly 
and cinderous fashion, but Stephen’s predilections leaned 
in the direction of a Van. In a grower’s Van or tilted 
Market-waggon you were boxed up delightfully with lovely 
smells about you—or smells, which if not quite lovely, were 
of green and growing things. There were chains hanging 
to tail-boards too, by which, after a fashion, a boy follow¬ 
ing behind might occasionally get a lift. So Stephen headed 
for the Great North Road, which was reached by a long 
lane deep in mud of a clayey and adhesive sort, and a short 
lane deeper still in mud of gruel-like consistency; anclas he 
came out upon it, there were the waggons and vans and 
carts rolling along as doggedly, as though in eighteen hours 
more it wouldn’t be Christmas Day. 

“Hi! You, boy! Pick up that there!” 

The shout was meant for Stephen. The driver of an! 
untilted van piled with crates of holly and mistletoe, had 
dropped his oilskin cape in the road as his horses trotted by. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 95 

“Why, here’s a face from Tolleymead, or I’m a Dutch¬ 
man!” said the driver, recognized by Stephen as a carter 
who had worked for the Tolley Hall farmer, and had gone 
away to better himself a year or two ago: “An’ how come 
you here, young Stevey-wag, and where be ye bound for ?” 

‘Wag’ was a common prefix to boys’ Christian names in 
Tolleymead. You heard ‘Charley-wag’ and ‘Billy-wag’ and 
‘Johnny-wag’ and ‘Dicky-wag’ apostrophized a dozen 
times in the course of a village stroll. 

“Goin’ up to have a look at the Market all decked and 
gay for Christmas?” the round-faced man commented when 
Stephen had replied. “But you’ll lose the best on it, 
travellin’ your way. For even wi’ my lightish load and my 
two good beasts to draw it, I shan’t be there myself by time 
the eight-o’clock bell rings. But then, you see, young cocky- 
wax”—the driver winked a moist eye pleasantly at Stephen 
—“I got in at four with the chicer stuff, an’ this is my second 
load. What d’ye say? Give me thruppence for a lift? 
Well, I don’t mind doing it for nothing, if you’ll perch 
yourself at the back o’ the van—an’ put up wi’ a few pricks. 
Them London boys are tigers after the holly an’ mistletoe, 
an’ it’ll be grab and bolt, grab and bolt,—once we gits past 
Highgate—all the way from Junction Road, to Wellington 
Street, / lay! Break yourself a fair-sized stick and let ’em 
have it on the knuckles. Up with you behind. Are you 
stiddy there? Then gee up, old Bess and Joe!” 

The sun climbed higher, and the frosty fog became less 
dense and woolly, and postmen bending under bags made 
appearance on the slippery roads—performing fantasias of 
double-knocks, dropping letters into areas, and delivering 
parcels to excited maids in a jocular and seasonable way. 
Many of the parcels had come undone, and the babies’ bon¬ 
nets and muffettees and smoking-caps and slippers and 
albums and tea-cosies that tumbled out of them were Christ¬ 
mas presents, or Stephen was deceived. 

Savoury smells of breakfast now made his mouth water, 
and whiffs of steaming mixtures, such as purl and flip and 
dog’s nose, hot rum-and-milk, and so forth, issued from 
the swing-doors of public-houses when customers passed in 
and out. 


96 The Pipers of the Market Place 

As regards the tigerish appetite of London boys for 
holly, the driver of the crate-van had not exaggerated in the 
least. Long before they had left the Archway Road and the 
Junction Road and were jolting over the Kentish Town and 
Camden Town cobblestones, the sport of rapping knuckles 
of varying shades of griminess had lost its early zest, and 
Stephen was fain to use the holly-stick for the warding off 
of well-aimed missiles, such as dead rats and kittens, rotten 
oranges, old shoes and clinkers; and cabbage-stalks culled 
from ash-boxes ranged along the kerbs. Gangs of Juvenile 
brigands wrought to frenzy by frustrated efforts, ignoring 
spoil more easily won, hung upon the back of the van, 
attending its progress through the thick of the crowded 
traffic of North London, harassing with yells and whoops 
of shrill derision the lone defender perched among the crates 
at its rear. 

Leaving these marauding bands behind, only to be again 
boarded and assailed by the audacious freebooters of yet 
another neighbourhood, Stephen (whose sufferings had 
been much increased by the tendency of the carter to comply 
with malicious exhortations to Whip Behind) began to have 
misgivings (I imagine for the first time) as to the desira¬ 
bility of Rovers and Freebooters. By the time the van 
reached Endell Street, he was disillusioned for life. But 
now, being wedged in a solid jam of carts and waggons 
(some of great size and drawn by great horses, in com¬ 
parison with whose proportions ponies seemed small as 
donkeys and the donkeys no bigger than big dogs), and all 
these vehicles being laden with the produce of country 
Market Gardens, young Braby’s individual sufferings were 
rendered less poignant by the fact of there being not only 
more Policemen there to put a check on stealing, but a wider 
and more varied choice of things to steal. For under the 
very noses of the big men in blue great-coats, with silver- 
badged helmets, slinking men, furtive-eyed and dressed in 
tattered garments, women with squashed pads on their heads 
that may once have been bonnets and shawls of the colour 
and consistency of decayed cabbage-leaves, dodged under 
the noses and bellies of the animals to pilfer from the 
baskets or rob the crates and hampers piled up in the vans. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 97 

Youths of sharp, pallid countenance, supple and nimble as 
monkeys, displayed themselves, despite their years, as mas¬ 
ters in the art of theft. And children of both sexes, all ages, 
and every type of viciousness, improved the murky morn¬ 
ing hour by cadging and pilfering, safeguarded from the 
policeman’s charge of begging or vagrancy by a halfpenny 
box of matches or a couple of leather bootlaces, or a farth¬ 
ing cake of blacking gripped in a dirty hand. 

7 

Stephen’s glowing anticipations of the beauty and splen¬ 
dour of London had not been realized up to now. Such 
shops as they had passed upon the road had looked dingy 
and had their blinds down. Such buildings as were of any 
size had been distinguished by ugliness. 

An occasional Royal Mail van, or the bright vermilion- 
painted carts of a well-known firm of newsvendors, made 
bright patches on the drabness, as they rattled behind their 
bony beasts over the cobblestones. But these were the only 
signs upon the streets that this was Stephen’s London. The 
newspaper boys were rending the air with shrieks of ‘Morn¬ 
ing Paper,’ and the broadsheets displayed outside station¬ 
ers’ shops, and at corners where omnibuses halted, an¬ 
nounced in jet-black capitals the Leading Intelligence of the 
Day. 

Take a dip or so with Stephen (who has spelt out Robin¬ 
son Crusoe and the names and descriptions of flowers from 
the Garden Lovers’ Manual, and a chapter or two from the 
New Testament as well as the Lives of the Sea Rovers ) 
into the Day’s Intelligence: 

H.R.H. the Prince of Wales Continued to make Progress 
towards Convalescence. Bulletins would now be posted at 
Marlborough House but Twice in the Twenty-four Hours. 
The Annual Distribution of Christmas Meat and Gifts to 
the Royal Cottagers and Dependents would be made 
To-day at Twelve o’clock on the Sandringham Estate. The 
Thirty-Five-Thousand Two-Hundred and Seventy-Two 
Paupers contained within the walls of the Metropolitan 
Workhouses were to be regaled on Christmas Day with 



98 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Prime Roast Beef, Plum Pudding, Beer, Fruit, Cake and 
other Seasonable Luxuries, the Aged being in addition sup¬ 
plied with Pipes, Tobacco and Snuff. And as the Bill for 
Putting Down Assassination in Ireland had been Found 
Too Feeble, Parliamentary Measures would be Taken, on 
the Re-assembling of Lords and Commons, to Crush for 
Ever the Hydra of Political Crime. 

This Christmas found—so the broadsheets said— 
France in a Condition of Tranquillity, though Fresh Dis¬ 
turbances were Apprehended at a Not Distant Date. Build¬ 
ing Operations were being briskly carried out by Architects, 
Engineers and Builders In Repair of the Wreckage brought 
about in the War of the Previous Year. Though the 
German Artillery (it was pointed out) had done Remark¬ 
ably Little Damage, compared with the Frightful Havoc 
wrought by Red Republican Troops; not to mention the 
Breaches the City of Paris had Sustained under the Bom¬ 
bardment carried out in the previous April by the Versailles 
Government, or the Wanton Pillage and Destruction of 
Public and Private Buildings during the Days of the 
Commune, and the Ruin wrought in the Final Struggle 
between Militarists and Insurgents for the Possession of 
the Capital. 

With the Revision of the Holy Bible (portions of the 
Gospels may have been found as much too strong in their 
denunciation of Hypocrisy as the Government Measures 
for the repression of Assassination in Erin’s Isle had been 
found too weak)—with the Taking of the Census, and some 
references to the Tichborne Case, which had reached its 
Seventieth Hearing without a Reply to the Claimant—the 
broadsheets dribbled into silence, as the holly-van rolled 
on. 

There had been, as they bumped out of Gower Street, 
a double-barrelled glimpse right and left down a really 
splendid thoroughfare, all shops and shops and shops again, 
which tickled Stephen’s eyes. But now, as the van left 
Endell Street, and barged its way through the solid jam 
of traffic in Long Acre, blocked with coster-barrows and 
donkey-carts loaded with holly and mistletoe—-and turned 
into a narrowish street up which more of these were strain- 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 99 

ing,—a street with a shop at the left-hand corner (with 
shining brazen helmets and a Fire Engine in its window), 
a mass of gloomy buildings rose upon the right and a sable- 
suited Portico adorned with Corinthian columns and grimy- 
featured statues rose to a Pediment of allegorical design, 
topped by more Muses and other classical wild-fowl, lost 
to Stephen’s ignorance in the frosty December fog, which 
was yellow now and specked with blacks, and strongly 
flavoured with orange-peel, decayed green vegetable matter, 
sewage, escaping gas, fried fish, roast chestnuts, and vio¬ 
lets. 

And now with wonder Stephen saw suspended against 
the front of the Portico—before which the up-current 
from the Strand and Covent Garden Market, meeting the 
down-currents from Endell Street, Long Acre and the 
by-streets, resulted in a blockage that threatened to be 
permanent—two colossal posters of rainbow hues. One 
announcing in six-inch capitals, that Under the Patron¬ 
age of Royalty, and the Nobility and Gentry of Great 
Britain, Mr. Harris (father of the Impresario of our recol¬ 
lection) would on Monday, December the 26th (Boxing Day 
Night), at 7 p.m. punctually, have the honour of Produc¬ 
ing his Annual Pantomime. 

The second poster depicted (nearly life-size too) Blue¬ 
beard, the tyrant Bashaw of Oriental fame, to Be Repre¬ 
sented by the Great Macdermott (Specially Engaged for 
the Christmas Season), Supported by Mons. Delivanti 
(another of your special engagements) in the role of the 
Learned Monkey, Orangatangabuskibaboonetta, and 
the Brilliant Comedienne , Singer and Dancer, Miss Millie 
Martino, —as Fatima. Those Talented Burlesque His- 
trions, The Brothers Bogson, were to be seen in the Char¬ 
acters of Mr. and Mrs. Shacabac. Mrs. Merridew as ‘Sister 
Anne’ and the Talented Kerb Kale Family as Bluebeard’s 
White Elephant and Fatima’s Arabian Courser, followed on 
the bill. With a final announcement that the Costumes 
(Executed by Madame Auguste) would be of Unparalleled 
Splendour and the Illuminations Absolutely Regardless of 
Expense. 

The Harlequinade would include Mr. A. Forrest (as 


100 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Clown). Mons. Paulo (Pantaloon) and Mile. Mercedes 
(from the Leading Continental Theatres) as Columbine. 
Opening Music selected and Composed by Mr. Betjemann. 
Choruses by the Spieglerpififel Glee, Catch and Cantata 
Choir. Dances arranged by Mons. Pasbas, and Scenery 
(absolutely Unlimited as to Cost and Brilliancy) by 
Messrs. Dayes, Caney and Perkins. Wigs by Fox. Pro¬ 
perties and Accessories by Bax and Twillery. Free List 
absolutely closed.—God Save the Queen. 

“My golly!” gasped Stephen Braby, with circular blue 
eyes of wonder, “that there place must be!—I do believe 
it is!-” 

“Cov’n Garden Theayter,” said a thickish voice beside 
him, and Stephen met the laughing glance of a girl some 
years his senior, with a round, pale face under a clipped 
straight fringe overhanging bright black eyes. 

She sat perched on the tail-board of the van, now immov¬ 
able in the pack of Bow Street. A shabbily dressed but not 
ragged girl, who might have been thirteen. She had no 
business to be there, dangling her legs as coolly as though 
the van belonged to her; and Stephen meant to tell her so, 
but she spoke again as he opened his mouth, and he shut it 
up quick. 

“Cov’n Garden Theayter. The ’ouse where they ’as 
the Pantomime. Ain’t you not never seen it, you rummy 
little cove?” 

“No, Miss,” said Stephen wistfully, looking back at the 
poster, for the van was beginning to move again. 

“Fancy you calling of me Miss. In this ’ere kind o’ 
toggery. Though if you seed me Sundays it might seem 
more nat’ral-like. You oughter see me Sundays. I’m a 
swell then—I am! Lend me that stick for ’arf a mo’.” 
Her tone changed to truculence as she snatched Stephen’s 
holly cudgel. “You Chinney, if you gits up ’ere I’ll poke 
yer ugly eye out. An’ then you’ll have to git abart wif a 
dog an’ a tin can.” 

Their would-be fellow-passenger on the tail of the van 
was a short young coster with side-locks, a leather-peaked 
cloth cap, and a black patch over one eye. Threatened by 
the young lady with the stick, he fell back grinning, and 




How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 101 

vanished amongst the moving legs of the horses and ponies 
and donkeys and the rolling wheels of the vans and carts 
and barrows and trucks that were slipping and sliding over 
the cabbage-leaves and orange-peels that covered the maca¬ 
damized pavement of Bow Street at this point. 

“My! didn’t yer stare just now, when you turned yer 
’ead and see^me,” continued the assured young lady, settling 
her shawl. “ ’Ad yer mouth open, so you ’ad—wide enough 
to swaller Bluebeard, wiv ’is Monkey an’ wives an’ all 
the lot. Jest so you ’ave it now.” 

They had passed a great glass-roofed building and a 
row of shops and cheap restaurants and crossed a shortish 
thoroughfare, congested with greengrocers’ carts, coster¬ 
mongers’ barrows standing backed against the kerbstones, 
and such enormous market vans, heavily built, hoisted on 
high springs, and drawn by giant horses, as Stephen Braby 
had never seen in all his life before. 

In proportion with the size of the vehicles (which blocked 
the middle of the street and were nearly all empty)—and the 
animals that drew them, were the robust men who drove; 
ruddy of cheek and bushily whiskered, their giant limbs 
and bodies clad in panoply of corduroy. They shouted in 
ogreish voices and laughed like rattling thunder, and every 
man had an invoice-book sticking out of one of his pockets, 
and was wiping his face with a blue-speckled or red cotton 
pocket handkerchief; and with as much need to wipe it, 
too, as though it were July. And not a man but was drink¬ 
ing beer, or calling for beer,—which was brought him by 
potmen in white aprons with rolled-up shirt-sleeves, and 
badged porters in long-sleeved waistcoats with aprons of 
green baize. Beyond were some squat buildings surrounded 
by a crowd of people, and down a long vista beyond them 
were brilliant flowers and fruits. Only a glimpse, but 
Stephen’s eyes glittered as they caught it, and Stephen’s 
heart thumped heavily behind the hunkumed smock. 

“Ain’t—ain’t that there place Coven’ Garden Flower 
Market?” 

“Them as likes to call the Arcade the Markit can if 
they wants, but we knows better nor that.” She sniffed 
contemptuously, and went on in the thick catarrhal accents 


102 The Pipers of the Market Place 

of the London coster: “Nah, stoopid! That s the Fruit 
Harcade. Wot a jolly mug you har. There’s two Flower 
Shops each end of the Harcade, but the Flower Markit’s 
outside it. Don’t you twig the stands under the Pyassas 
each side, an’ the flares lightin’ the stalls ? Well, they runs 
like that right along each side of a square, ’bout the Har¬ 
cade Buildin’s, an’ outside the Church an’ the Portico 
’Otel. . . . Make ready to git down!” 

“What for?” asked Stephen rather stupidly. The roll 
of traffic and the roar of voices made him feel heavy in the 
head. 

“Why, becos’ this here wan ain’t goin’ to stop ere in 
Russell Street. Turn up along Tavistock Street it will,— 
an’ I’m gittin’ down myself. Look at Mr. Buckley jest 
inside the Harcade, smokin’ ’is cigar as usual. You never 
sees Mr. Buckley wivout ’is cigar. . . .” 

“Who be Mr. Buckley?” Stephen queried. 

“Ain’t you never ’eard of Buckley? . . Buckley 
might have been the Emperor of all the fabled Russias, 
so full of awe and reverence was this little Cockney’s tone. 
“ ’Olesale Fruit an’ Potato Importer? Him of the Stores in 
Flora Street. Wherever does yer come from, wiv yer night¬ 
shirt over yer does ?” 

“It ain’t no nightshirt. It be a smock,” returned the 
wearer of the vilified garment. “We fares to field in such¬ 
like where I lives to, in Hertfordshire.” 

“We puts ’em on to go to bed—which I means the men 
an’ boys does, when they can afford ’em that is—but mostly 
they goes wivout. You can see ’em dryin’ in back-yards 
an’ hangin’ out o’ winders. There’s Mr. Buckley agin! . . . 
’Tain’t no use to ’oiler. ’E’s gone down the Harcade ’e 
’as, to speak to Mr. James. Yer’ll see two stands tother 
end of the Harcade, right-’and side o’ the Harchway, an’ 
a board with ‘Buckley Brothers’ over a gas-flare. An’ 
Buckley Brothers is Mr. James an’ Mr. John, which is sons 
to Mr. Buckley. Growers they are at Sidcup, an’ they holds 
a sight of ground. An’ Little Lou Buckley she’s Mr. 
Buckley’s grandchild. Mr. James is ’er farver. . . . 
Watch now. I’m a-goin’ to jump!” 

“Wait till she stops. You’ll get hurted, Miss,” said 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 103 

Stephen anxiously, venturing to lay a timid hand upon ir r 
ragged sleeve. 

“She won’t pull up ’ere wiv this load o’ Chrismiss green¬ 
stuff. He’ll turn into Tavistock Street, he will, an’ take it 
round that way. I shan’t git ’urted, silly! I alius does 
like this ’ere.” 

“Can I come wi’ you?” 

“Try, an’ chance it!” 

The black-eyed girl promptly jumped, diving under the 
pole of a two-horsed van behind them, and Stephen, stuffing 
his little bundle into the breast of his smock-frock, tumbled 
after the black-eyed girl, in the literal sense of the word. 

* * * * * 

“Hi, hi!” 

“Hi, hi! Hi!” 

“Now then, stoopid! WHERE are you cornin’ to ?” 

A shaggy hoof, heavily shod with new bright iron, came 
ponderously down on the greasy stones within three inches 
of Stephen’s ear. And iron-tyred wheels, ponderous and 
broad, were crashing all about him, and a forest of hairy 
equine legs penned and prisoned him round. And—a rough 
hand caught him by the scruff and hauled him out of peril; 
minus the one-tailed Scotch cap; with his hunkumed smock 
half over his head, and his great boots clattering on the 
stones. 

“I’ve half a mind to run you in, you blundering young 
donkey,” said No. X. of A Division. “Now, what are 
you trying to do ?” 

“Git back me cap I bin an’ lost!” panted Stephen. 

“ ’Much as your life is worth, young chap, to try at 
getting hold of it,” said the bearded, greatcoated constable, 
turning his broad blue back and stepping into the double 
stream of traffic as before. And the pale-faced, black-eyed 
girl, at whose heels Stephen had courted disaster, dodged 
grinning from under the body of a passing cart, dived under 
the nose of a coster’s shaggy pony, and now stood at 
Stephen’s side, offering him—what? 

“My Crikey, ain’t it all of a slime! Reckon your mother 
could wash it. If you ’as a mother, that is. Don’t look as 
if you ’ad.” 


104 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“I got one safe enough, though!” asserted Stephen. 

“Wot is she? Wot do she do for a livin’, that’s wot I 
means ?” 

“She works at the Tolley Hall Dairy Farm,—and she’s a 
Masterpiece.” 

“Wot’s that?” 

“Go an’ find out!” 

“Yer a cheeky kid!” 

“I be bigger nor you, an’ you’re nobbut a gal, neither!” 
retorted Stephen. 

“If I am a gal,” she flashed at him, “I’m trusted—that’s 
wot I am! Look at this pyper I got in me ’and.” She 
waved the yellow envelope. “This is a Business Cable for 
Mr. Buckley from France. Like enough with a Trade 
Order for a ’underd pound inside it!” 

“I’ll believe on ye right enough”—Stephen had an in¬ 
spiration—“when I sees ye give it Buckley.” 

“Orl right, I’m gyme! But mind you don’t bone noth¬ 
ing. Them Markit Inspectors is everywhere an’ the Por¬ 
ters is paid to ’ave eyes. Foller ’ard be’ind me an’ say wot- 
ever I ses. Twig them grapes wot them men ’ave a-carryin’ 
in the baskets. Smell the chrysampemums an’ lilies, an’ 
say ain’t they just prime! An’ don’t bump into no porters’ 
trolleys, an’ mind where yer cornin’. Down the Harcade is 
the shortest cut. An’ when you gits outside of it, remem¬ 
ber two stalls under a Nawning an’ ‘Buckley Brothers’ 
painted on a board.” 

She dived into the thick of the murky crowd and van¬ 
ished from Stephen’s vision. He set his teeth and plunged 
after her with the vaguest views as to where. 

Now from the mouth of the ‘Harcade,’ which served 
as the exit from the Market, streamed a procession of 
Cybeles with towers upon their heads. Vociferous, ample 
and Irish, nearly every one of them, wearing crossover 
shawls and coarse white aprons with licensed porters’ 
badges (white letters on circular discs of black tin) dang¬ 
ling in front of their waists. On the top of their squashed 
bonnets were straw pads, and on top of the pads were 
baskets full of flower-pots with ferns or heaths in them, 
or little green shrubs with red berries, or bunches of cut 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose l(k> 

flowers. Violets turning the London air to rarest sweet¬ 
ness as they passed, and chrysanthemums of bronze and 
yellow and pink, exhaling their turpentiny smell. On either 
arm each lady bore a similar basketful, and seldom was 
the mouth of the bearer unadorned by a short and black¬ 
ened clay. 

“Mind your heads! Mind your toes!” every one seemed 
shouting: “Come on, you Mary, Norah, Kate! Wake up 
with that there stuff. . . ” 

And the Norahs and Marys and Kates and the rest 
responded with such vigour, and Stephen, who had got 
mixed up with the ladies and the baskets, sustained so 
many bruises, bumps, scratches and abrasions, that he was 
fain to flatten against the wall and pant and gasp for breath. 

But when the vans and carts of the greengrocers and 
fruiterers that had blocked the middle of Russell Street 
had backed up to the jaws of the Arcade and been filled 
and driven away, he tried again,—to encounter a rush 
of costers similarly laden, and when he made a third essay, 
was caught in the charge of a column of porters with note¬ 
books sticking out of side-pockets, pushing wheeled trucks 
piled high with frails and wicker hampers, and swept into 
the long crowded passage like a leaf before a storm. 

And then he was in the packed Arcade, deafened by 
the roar of many wheels and the clamour of many voices, 
inhaling, with the acrid smell of sweated corduroy and 
fustian, rank tobacco, onions and beer,—the fragrance of 
fruit and flowers. 

Through great glass windows either side, rare glimpses 
were vouchsafed him. Carnations and stephanotis, camellias 
and pelargoniums arranged in gilded baskets or massed 
in crystal bowls. . . . But when he would have lingered 
here, because their voices called him, he was thrust on, 
remorselessly, and now the flowers were gone. . . . And 
there were piles of luscious grapes, Muscat and blue-black 
Hamburghs, and pyramids of golden oranges and red- 
brown juicy pears. And here he would have stopped to 
gloat, but the human torrent rolled onwards under the flar¬ 
ing gas-jets, towards a foggy patch of day. 

More glimpses of flowers on either hand—tall lilies and 


i06 The Pipers of the Market Place 

red and pink camellias, mounds of mauve and purple 
cyclamen, and live fish of pure gold swimming in a big glass 
tank,—and he drew a breath of frosty fog as he passed 
beyond the Arcade extension, and knew that he stood 
where all his life he most had longed to be. 

8 

Covent Garden Market, the Hub of the Universe! Its 
cobblestones were under Stephen’s feet and its breath 
was in his lungs, the sweet fragrance of innumerable 
flowers and plants, and homely fruits and vegetables 
triumphing over all the other smells of human and of 
brute. 

“Stephen, Stephen, you have come! We’re glad to 
see you, Stephen! Love us more than others love, and 
we will give you more.” 

Thus the little voices that had sung and called to him 
since his childhood seemed all piping together in tones of 
elfin joy. 

Before the Shadow had fallen on the cottage by the 
wheatacres Stephen had known happiness. But this was 
something rarer than he had tasted there. If some strong¬ 
winged Angel had caught him up, and soared with him 
beyond the spin of known and unknown planets and set him 
wide-eyed and wondering in the Courts of Heaven, I ques¬ 
tion whether his ecstasy might have exceeded this. 

The stones were air beneath his feet. He moved for¬ 
wards without knowing it, conscious of nothing but won¬ 
der, and a deep content with life. The sharp girl faded 
from his mind, and the board with ‘Buckley Brothers’ shone 
under its illuminating flare in vain for Stephen’s eyes. 

The gouty pillars and wide shallow steps of St. Paul’s 
were obscured by pyramids of market-garden produce of 
every imaginable sort. So was the frontage of the ‘Portico’ 
Hotel. So also what once was Evans’, concealed behind 
hoardings at this date, and in process of conversion into 
a Club. Wherever Stephen turned his eyes were flowers, 
flowers, flowers; cheap and common or costly, rich and 
rare. And they nodded to him, and called to him—though 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 107 

their voices were so tiny, they drowned the roar of traffic 
from the streets close by, and the deafening din of the 
Strand. 

Under the thicknesses of chilly fog that veiled the sky 
over London hung a mist of delicate pearliness that was 
not fog, but the extract of fog, doubly and triply refined. 
The twinkling gas-lamps under the colonnades and the flare- 
lights used by the stand-holders illumined the greyness from 
beneath, and threw Rembrandtesque lights and shadows on 
isolated figures or moving groups of buyers and market- 
folk. 

But above the rows of flower-stands, and walls of frails 
and hampers, and shallows cunningly displaying their lavish 
store of blooms, the pearly mist was tinted, as though with 
their diverse fragrance the flowers gave forth the essence 
of their varied colour too. Thus over a magnificent display 
of coral-red camellias, the pearly fog was incarnadined 
with the hues of the setting sun. And tall multiflowered 
sheaves of lilies, all snowy-white and golden, or rosy, tipped 
with carmine; and banks of tawny or sulphur or brown or 
wine-coloured chrysanthemums and mounds of purple vio¬ 
lets were canopied with a tapestry of diaphanous vapour, 
dyed with each blossom’s peculiarly distinctive hue. 

The crowd seemed solid, yet its constituents were never 
less than mobile, and its elements, though diverse, were con¬ 
tinually changed. It roared and bawled and jabbered like 
the Zoological Gardens at feeding time, yet under carts 
pulled up by the kerb men and boys lay fast asleep. Their 
dogs, tied to the wheels, or loose, kept nippy watch on 
the light-fingered, and in this shouting, chaffering crowd 
of both sexes and all ages and conditions (every one out to 
profit, whether as seller or buyer), the crooks and sharps, 
the cadgers and prigs who are drones of the beehive of 
London were here, there and everywhere. . . . 

The stall-holders had begun to sell at four o’clock that 
morning, when the wet newspapers came in from the Press 
with the Foreign Market news. Growers strolled about 
smoking cigars, booking deals and transacting business. At 
five o’clock, while the porters’ loads of stuff were being 


108 The Pipers of the Market Place 

brought from the waggons, and the laden women whom 
Stephen had met were streaming in —not out—the Buyers 
and Brokers had hilariously rushed past the big policemen 
at the barriers, and (long before seven) the Hagglers had 
taken the Market by storm. 

“ ’Day, Guv’nor!” A coster and his pal (both be¬ 
spangled with pearly buttons) bear down upon James 
Buckley of Buckley Brothers, presiding over the nearest 
of his two stalls on the right outside the Arcade, his fore¬ 
man, Groggard, an elderly man, doing business at the other ; 
while Simkin, an athletic youth (whose relaxation is pugil¬ 
ism) divides his services equally between master and man; 
“Got my chrysanths, Guv’nor, and them wite ’yacinths? 
Yus, that’s my box! ’Ow do I know? Becos I sees my 
name on it. Ain’t my name on that box there, Elfred, 
wrote up clear?” 

“Gosmejudge if it ain’t, Joe! Plain as a blushin’ Arfa- 
bet!” asseverates Elfred with professional brazenness. 

“Now when I don’t even know your name-” begins 

James Buckley. Not often caught in this way, he has 
looked round for once, exactly as he was meant to. . . . 
“No, that’s not yours. This is yours, if you choose.to 
make it so. Pay and take it, or leave it if you don’t like 
it,—it won’t go begging long.” 

“Awright! I’ll take it, Guv’nor. ’Ere’s the I’m-so-funny. 
Don’t be ’ard on a pore cove.” 

And the box of chrysanthemums changes hands, and the 
two costers move off with it together. But Elfred has 
hooked a second box at that fortuitous moment when the 
Guv’nor looked round. Discovering this, the Guv’nor ex¬ 
changes a glance with his shirt-sleeved foreman. Its mean¬ 
ing is: “Had that time. Don’t tell the joke on me!” 

“ ’Ow much the ’arf-dozen bunches these ’ere sweet vi’lets, 
Mister?” An elderly female of the flower-hawking class 
points to a heap of bunches, accidentally brushing some 
outliers with the end of her dirty shawl. Two go. She 
buys three, and moves on, feeling virtuous. Has she not 
paid good money? What can the man want more! 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 109 

“Give us a flower, plyse, gen’leman. Gen’leman, do give 
us a flower. On y one, gen’leman.” 

“Here you are then!” A yellow chrysanthemum be¬ 
comes the property of a small and snuffly urchin. “Now 
hook it, d’ye hear ? Hook it!” orders the Guv’nor, and the 
small boy moves away, wiping his nose on his jacket-sleeve. 
When he gets past the stall he runs. Another youth, who 
has hooked a small fern and a pot of Roman hyacinths has 
signalled. . . . And so the game goes on. 

“Good morning! Any rope, twine, bast or fine wire for 
buttonholes, or bookays?” An emissary from a wholesale 
dealers in Bow Street, touting for trade orders. 

“Paper, blue, white or pink! First, Second or Third 
quality.” The agent of another trade firm lower down 
in Wellington Street. “By the ream, or packet, or bale 
of reams. Can we supply you ?” 

“Papers! Morning Papers, Daily Telegraph, Daily News, 
Times, Standard, Weekly Courier ” 

A hoarse whisper, flavoured with gin. (Begging, like 
hawking, is prohibited within the precincts of the Market.) 

“Pity the pore blind! Buy a light! Gord bless yer,— 
yer a gentleman!” 

“Paregoric for the throat! 'Dr. Parker’s Paregoric.’ ” 
A bottle produced from a coat-pocket is thrust under your 
nose. 

“Dust combs (fine tooth). Catch ’em all alive O!” A 
card of specimens furtively displayed. 

“Laces, penny a pair!” 

“Studs, as good as gold!” 

A card of brazen jewellery confidentially offered. 

“Cough-drops and Lickerish!” 

“Pencils! Pencil-cases, the Old Brummagem Firm!” 

This man has his wares in the lining-band of his hat, 
and carries his hat in his hand. 

“Take home an Animated Sausage for the Kids, or a 
real Dancing Injun!” 

“The Dying Pig!” a piercing squeal of which Superin¬ 
tendents are oblivious. “More nateral nor life! O’ny thrup- 
pence!” 


110 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Dubbin to keep the wet out o’ yer boots,” says some¬ 
body in a deep bass growl. 

“Cashoos to please the ladies!” 

“Any capth or shirth or panth or thockth, or ve’th, 
or necktieth? Thpethial low pritheth—firtht-clath goodth.” 
A Hebrew with a compatriot openly staggering under a 
bale. “Or anything for the ladieth? Thtayth? . . . 
Thtockinth ? . . . Themitheth? . . . Real lathe on ’em— 
on’y thee!” 

“Coffee!” Cups of coffee boiling hot, baskets of cake 
full of raisins and ready-sliced in chunks, and wedges, 
piled-up plates of bread-and-butter, sandwiches, sausage- 
rolls, veal-pies temptingly set out on a wheeled stall with 
brightly-polished fittings, pushed through the Market by 
a well-dressed Jewish girl. There were plenty of coffee- 
stalls between the pillars of the Piazzas and all the eating- 
houses in the neighbourhood were driving a roaring trade. 
But Miss Addie with her toothsome wares is a feature 
of the Market, and an uncommonly pretty picture too. 
Quite as pretty and dressed as stylishly is Miss Essie, carry¬ 
ing a napkined tray with steaming cups of tea. 

Stephen’s single shilling burns in his pocket as these 
raven-haired, bright-eyed princesses sweep haughtily 
down on him. But such cates as these dainty ladies sell are 
not for muddy boys. 

“Your coffee, Mr. Harris. And yours, Mr. Lowmore! 
I think you said coffee, didn’t you, Mr. Veitchly? . . . 
This for you, Mr. Sanders, as per usual. Tea, Mr. Buck- 
ley? .. . I’ve not forgotten that you don’t take sugar now. 
And you, Mr. James? Can’t either of us tempt you?” 

“Well, then. Miss Addie, I’ll take a cup, and thank you, 
though I breakfasted at father’s along with my little Lou.” 

A crowd of customers pressed round, and the steam¬ 
ing cups were handed. The brown veal-pies and the sand¬ 
wiches and cake and bread-and-butter went off like so much 
savoury smoke. There were diamonds rivalling their 
wearer’s eyes, in the dainty ears overshadowed by silken 
jet-black tresses, and diamond rings on the white hands 
that dispensed the hot drinks and cold eatables, and dropped 
the money taken in exchange into a natty waist-belt bag. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 111 

Those white hands, were you privileged to visit at the 
Highgate villa occupied by the parents of their lovely own¬ 
ers, (who were born in the little low-ceiled room over the 
coffee-shop in Russell Street)—those fair hands would dash 
you off the newest valse arranged for the piano by Coote or 
Arditi, or play you, with a master-touch acquired from a 
Parisian professor a Sonata by Beethoven or a Symphony 
of Gounod. And if their white teeth gleam and flash at 
jests rather broader than are commonly made in the 
presence of young ladies (who were expected to be inno¬ 
cent forty-one years ago), both of these are as good as 
gold, and pure as the flowers of the Market, in whose close 
neighbourhood they were born, and on whose ancient cobble¬ 
stones they learned to toddle, to troll their hoops, to wheel 
their dolls’ perambulators; and play the games that are 
popular with youth of every class and kind. 

Miss Addie, bless her kindly heart,— (she married young 
Levi Manasseh, son and heir of the wealthy proprietor of 
five flourishing fried-fish-and-tater shops in Wellington 
Street, the Lower Strand and Red Lion Street, Holborn,— 
and has middle-aged married sons and daughters who move 
in Society, and whose children, I hope, have inherited their 
grandmother’s good looks)—Addie, I say—(who had 
brought back from Paris a tender recollection of the blonde 
young Polish Professor who taught music at her boarding- 
school three mornings in the week throughout the term) — 
caught a glimpse of a pair of big blue eyes full of yearning, 
wistful admiration, and assumed to herself the sentiment 
created by her veal-pies and plum-cake. 

“Did I hurt you, little boy? You shouldn’t stand in 
the way so. Over your poor toes, did I go?” 

The little boy shook a curly yellow head, and his eyes 
grew still more wistful. And the Polish piano-instructor 
had had blue eyes and frizzy yellow hair. . . . 

“He looks hungry, doesn’t he, Essie?” pursues the gentle 
Addie. 

“Well, if you think so, give him a veal-pie.” 

Essie is smiling at bashful Stephen over her tray of 
teacups, and he smiles back, showing square white teeth 
and crinkling his black-lashed blue eyes. 


112 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“And some bread-and-butter and a piece of cake.” Addie 
slips these good things into a paper-bag and as Stephen 
dizzily receives them: “A cup of coffee, too, you shall 
have. You look as if you wanted it! Don’t scald your¬ 
self by hurrying, now, we’re coming back this way. Set 
down the cup under the ledge of that stall when you’ve 
done. We’re sure to see it! And good-bye. Yes, he did 
thank me!” says Addie as an admirer hints that the country 
lout in the smock has got no manners. “Oh, Essie, if I do 
fall down and worship anything in Nature,—it’s a pair 
of blue eyes with black eyelashes like Jacobinski had!” 

And the resplendent coffee-stall rolls away with the two 
black-eyed Princesses, and Stephen’s heart is full indeed,— 
but his mouth is fuller yet. The veal-pie and bread-and- 
butter have vanished and the coffee-cup is empty, when a 
remembered, thickish voice, says just behind his ear: 

“My eye, young country customer, you ain’t pitching in, 
by ’arf, har yer?” And his lady-acquaintance with the 
fringe regards him with wistful eyes. 

“I’ve ett all the bread-an’-butter—an’ the pie—an’ I fared 

to keep th’ plum-cake to take home to my mother. But-” 

Stephen breaks the ambrosial hunch and offers the moiety. 

“I don’t want none o’ your old cake,” says the girl. “Best 
keep it for yer mother.” 

But she yields in the end, on condition that he shares 
the hunch of cake with her. And they revel in plummy 
sweetness, with the roar of the Market round them. . . . 

“Boys gits more nice things than the gals,” says Becky, 
with her mouth full. She has told Stephen her Christian 
name and he has returned her confidence. “Yus, I found 
Mr. Buckley an’ give him the furrin wire. Wasn’t no good 
waiting for yer, I reckoned as yer’d lorst yerself. He came 
to the Market early,” she continues, through her munch¬ 
ing, “along of Little Lou being here. Crismiss Eve’s Little 
Lou’s birthday. Ain’t that a funny birthday?” She bolts 
the final raisin, and Stephen agrees that ’tis rummy-like to 
be borned on such a day. “Born an’ not borned. . . . ’Ow 
queer you talk. Ain’t you never seed Lou Buckley? She’s 
Mr. James Buckley’s little girl, an’ I reckon he’s fond o’ her! 
Called ’is new rose ‘Lou Buckley’—what took the Society’s 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 113 

Gold Medal. . . . Ain’t you ’eard of the ’Orticultooral So¬ 
ciety wot ’as the Rose Shows in Westminister?” 

Yes, Stephen was dimly aware of the existence of that 
Institution, chiefly through listening to the conversation 
of Mr. Wix at ‘The Pure Drop.’ 

# “Orl right.” Becky nodded her approbation. “You 
ain’t sech a flat as yer looks, by ’arf. Now come an’ see 
little Lou Buckley. You passed Buckley’s stalls when 
you came out. Three up this side’s the board. . . . ‘Wot 
board?’ Why the one I told yer of, where Buckley Broth¬ 
ers is wrote up. That’s Mr. James, that tall thin man with 
the light brown beard an’ the stoop. An’ the shortish man 
wif the baldish ’ead (wot ’e’s mopping wif ’is red silk ’anker- 
chief) that’s Buckley Senior of the Stores in Flora Street 
near by. An’ see!—There, in the middle o’ the stall!-” 

Stephen looked where the grimed hand pointed, and 
gasped ecstatically: 

“A rose-tree in bloom o’ Christmas-time! My stars! 
Ain’t she nobbut lovely!” He had got ‘nobbut’ from 
Malvina, with her skin, and eyes, and curly hair of the 
colour of Canada wheat. 

‘She’ was a standard in a sixteen-inch pot, beautiful, 
vigorous and thornless, with foliage of olive-green shaded 
copper here and there. A handsome tree, close-set with 
blooms of pink, with silvery touches. ... A tree that might 
have grown in Eden when this grey old world was young. 

“Wot are you a-wipin’ your eyes for, Stoopid?” snapped 
Becky, sharply. 

Stephen covered his weakness with a laugh as he smeared 
his sleeve over the eyes. 

“You had me fair, I reckon, Miss,” he stammered, blush- 
ing guiltily. “Becos’ along o’ what you said, I reckoned 
’twas a Little Girl. An’ when I see it standing up so gallant 
and looking so beautiful I somehows fared to feel as if”— 
he boggled,—“ ’twere a Angel instid of a Rose.” 

“You makes my 'ead fair spin, you do,” said Becky, 
prodding him with her sharp elbow. “Can’t you look 
where I’m pintin’? . . . There, Fathead! . . . Under 
the tree. ...” 

And Stephen looked below the tree and fell in love with 


114 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Lou Buckley. From that day hence, in the garden of his 
heart, one rose held sway supreme. 


9 

Where Stephen’s ignorant, adoring eyes saw a being of 
unearthly beauty, you or I would have seen a pretty, brown¬ 
haired child in a white fur cap and jacket, standing on tip¬ 
toe to return stout Mr. Buckley’s kiss. The serge frock 
under the fur jacket was also white, and the silken brown 
curls were daintily tied with a bow of silvery-pink riband- 
very much the colour of the roses on the little tree. 

“And how’s my Lou, and has she got a kiss for her 
old Gramp this morning?” asked the portly gentleman, 
beaming as Lou hugged him round the neck. 

'‘Three,” said Lou, proceeding to administer the kisses. 
“And one that mother sent you because she couldn’t come ” 

“Got the pudding on her mind, that’s what she has,” said 
James Buckley, winking at his father. “And the turkey. A 
regular monster, all of sixteen pounds. But you’ve met him 
before, I fancy, Dad!” 

“I should rather think I had!” returned the jolly-looking 
old gentleman. “In Leadenhall Market, yesterday, before 
the Public got in. They were going to hang him on a 
hook,” he added for Lou’s benefit, “but he begged so hard 
to come with me that I hadn’t the heart to say ‘No.’ So 
I had him put in a hamper and sends him to Emma at 
Sidcup, knowing she’d treat him kindly.” 

“And she has, she has!” reiterated Lou, bounding on 
the Market stones. 

“Filled him cram-full of good things, eh?” asked the old 
gentleman, chuckling. 

“Sausage-meat,” said James Buckley, as Lou skipped 
in rapture, “and egg and bread-crumbs and chopped herbs, 
and I don’t know what all. But Lou does!” 

“Because I helped,” said Lou, “and crumbled up the 
bread-crumbs, and shook the flour in the dredger over 
him when he was full.” 

“Well, well! To-morrow, please God,” said jolly Mr. 
Buckley, “we shall all of us sit down to table and eat a 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 115 

bit of him. Not Lou,” added the old gentleman know¬ 
ingly. “Lou doesn’t like roast turkey!” 

“But she does, she does, she does, she does!” Lou was 
so emphatic in her assertion that every repetition of the 
word lifted her on to the very tips of her little bronze 
button-boots. 

“Turkey, but not Christmas pudding!” said Lou’s father 
with pretended seriousness. 

“Turkey and Christmas pudding too,—all in blue flames 
and blazes”—Lou opened her brown eyes enormously 
wide—“and scalded cream with the pudding. And Black 
Hamburgh grapes, and pineapple, and walnuts and almonds 
and raisins, and-” 

“Phew!” puffed her grandfather, blowing out his cheeks. 
“Why, that would never do at all. We’d have Lou walking 
in her sleep again, and scaring of her mother. . . . Has she 
—since? You remember, James?” He looked sharply at 
his son. 

“Not for a long while now, Dad,” returned James Buck- 
ley in an undertone. “And as for her appetite, I wish we 
could get her to eat a bit more. Pecks like a dicky-bird. 
Her mother thinks ’tis because she’s no brother or sister.” 

“Humph!” said his father, with a darkening brow. “But 
you’re both o’ you still young.” 

James Buckley coughed, a hollow cough, and his father’s 
frown grew deeper. 

“There now,—I don’t like that!” he commented uneasily, 
with the shadow so foreign to its cheerfulness darkening his 
mottled face. “You work too hard, Jemmy my boy. You 
have no mercy on yourself, and so I tell you plainly. One 
of these days-” 

“S’sh, father! Don’t let the little one hear you!” 

“All right. But I don’t like it!” 

“What don’t Gramp like?” asked Lou. 

“He don’t like a hard lump in his coat-tail when he 
goes to sit down,” said the grandfather. 

“Why, that’s my Sambo doll,” shrieked Lou, as the 
old gentleman fumbled in his coat-tails and drew forth a 
small bifurcated black object, which he held up by a leg, 
“O Gramp! don’t say he has been hurt!” 




116 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“l didn’t say so. He hurt me. Here, take him, and 
don’t lose him again!” 

Mr. Buckley rubbed a mottled ear and regarded his 
granddaughter whimsically, as she received the goggling 
puppet into a warm embrace. 

“Bless my soul I All those kisses for Sambo. Well, 
well! I must get another little girl to walk round the 
Market with me.” 

“Me, me! No other little girl!” 

Lou flew to seize upon his hand. And there ensued 
a comedy between the old man and the pretty child. 

James Buckley, with his stock sold out and his pockets 
bulging with cheques and bank-notes, gold and silver and 
telegrams, stood watching with eyes of love. And two 
little Sisters of Charity in the habit of the Order of Naza¬ 
reth—smiled as they glanced in passing at the pair, and 
stopped at a cry from Lou. 

“Sister Josephine! Sister Catherine!” 

“Now to Goodness!—if it isn’t Lou Buckley! . . . How 
are you, love? And how’s your dear mother? And how 
in the world do you come here?” 

“Why, Sister,”—the second wearer of the close-frilled, 
snow-white coif and blue-bordered black veil and scapular, 
turned a withered-apple face and bright black eyes on 
the rosy, blue-eyed speaker,—“didn’t you know her father 
had a business place at Covent Garden? And Lou is with 
her father now, aren’t you, childie, dear?” 

“Yes, Sister. For a special treat my Daddy sometimes 
brings me. Such fun getting up in the night, and the long 
drive in the van. And when it comes to nine o’clock we 
go back to Gramp’s, and to bed there. . . . And there’s my 
Daddy and that’s my Gramp—and you must come and 
speak to them!” 

“Pleased to meet you, ladies!” says James Buckley pleas¬ 
antly smiling, as Lou drags her captives over, each by a 
willing hand. 

“Father-” 

“Sure, we’ve met this gentleman before,” the elder Sister 
is beginning, when old Mr. Buckley stops her by saying 
with his hearty laugh: 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 117 

“Aha! I thought I knew you both. Well—well! you 
had me prettily.’’ 

“Indeed, and so we did, now!” agrees rosy Sister Cather¬ 
ine. “And very good you were to us, and our old folks at 
Hammersmith.” 

“Better than I meant to be,” chuckles the cheerful old 
gentleman, meeting James Buckley’s rather puzzled look. 
“So I warned my men to hold their tongues and keep the 
tale from my son here. But now the joke is blown on, he 
may as well know! It was somewhere about Thursday, 
James, these good ladies were passing through Flora Street, 
and stopped at my warehouse to ask a trifle for their old 
folks at Hammersmith. So I pointed to a hundredweight 
bag of prime Early Roses, standing inside the doorway, 
where my carters had just set it. And I said to this young 
lady-” 

“Sure, I’m only Sister Catherine,” interposed the rosy- 
faced, blue-eyed nun with calm simplicity. 

“Well, I said to her, ‘Carry that bag away, and ’pon my 
honour I’ll give it you!’ ” 

“And so I did,” said Sister Catherine, “and beautiful the 
murphies were!” 

“That’s the point, James,—so she did. Tucked up her 
skirt, stooped down—whipped up the bag of ’taters in her 
arms and carried it off down Flora Street. Ha, ha, ha! 
With my men all laughing at me—” protested the old gentle¬ 
man, laughing heartily himself. ? „ 

“Be good enough to excuse my father, ma’am, said 
James Buckley in a lowered tone, to the withered-apple 
Sister. “He means no rudeness, but he likes to have his 

little joke.” . 

“Ah, then, if all jokes cut at us were floury big potatoes, 
folks might pelt us with them,” said the elder nun^ “when¬ 
ever they had a mind! But indeed and indeed they’re good 
to us at the Market,—God reward them!” . 

“Hinckman! Fetch over a bag of greens and half a sieve 
of onions,” said James Buckley to a passing porter, “and 
put them in the Sisters’ van. Where is it waiting, la¬ 
dies ?” 

“At the Burleigh Street end of Tavistock Street. And 




118 The Pipers of the Market Place 

may the good God repay you with the love of His Heavenly 
Child l” 

“It’s to-night at His Holy Table we’ll be remember¬ 
ing you,” said little Sister Josephine. “The Reverend 
Mother, and the Sisters, and the children and the old people 
too. Glory be to Him! What lilies!” 

“For your altar at Nazareth House,” said the younger 
Buckley smiling, as he put a great white-and-golden sheaf 
into the arms of the radiant nun. 

“Sure, you must be a Catholic,” said blue-eyed Sister 
Catherine. 

“Not I, but my wife is,” said Buckley. “And the little 
one there as well.” 

“Down at Sidcup ’twas we met your good wife, and 
the dear child,” said Sister Catherine. 

“Early in the summer,” Sister Josephine chimed in, 
“when Sister Catherine and me were on our begging rounds. 
We were at Our House at Woolwich then, and now we’re 
at the Mother House at Hammersmith, and Lou must 
come and see us there, and your dear wife too, we’ll hope.” 

“Perhaps she will,” said Buckley. “Good morning, ladies, 
both of you, and a Merry Christmas to you all.” 

“Happy and blessed be your own!” chorused the grateful 
Sisters, “and may Our Dear Lord send you many happy 
New Years!” 

Buckley was shaken with his hollow hacking cough as 
he returned the nuns’ good wishes, and the sombre shadow 
fell again, darkening his father’s face. 

IO 

Lou and her grandfather, in company with the nuns, hav¬ 
ing vanished down a flowery vista, Buckley was now re¬ 
spectfully returning the good morning of a portly, well- 
dressed gentleman in a costly fur-trimmed overcoat. An 
official belonging to the Household Department of a cer¬ 
tain Royal Personage, and as pompous as the lackeys of 
Royalty are ever wont to be. 

“Very sorry. Uncommonly sorry, sir, I do assure you. 


How Stephen Fell in hove with a Rose 119 

But that little tree was specially grown for my little girl’s 
birthday. It’s the Gold Medal Rose of last year’s Show, 
‘Lou Buckley’ I named it for her. . . . No, we haven’t got 
another, nor could we get you one. We British Growers 
don’t set up to compete with France in Forced Rose Blooms 
this particular time of year. In the French Market at the 
Floral Hall, they might have the sort of thing required. 
Straight on, keeping to the right—go in at the West 
Entrance—unless you’d wish to send my man—and down 
a flight of stairs!” 

And the Palace official went on his way in search of the 
French Market—called ‘the Flea Pit’ in the bygone days, 
as is its successor in these. And as Buekley took his pencil 
from behind his ear, he felt a tug at his coat-tail, and 
clapped both his hands on his pockets, that bulged with the 
takings of the day. 

“Mr. Buckley, sir-” 

“And ‘Sir’ to you,” said James Buckley with genial 
pleasantry, looking down from his six feet of height at a 
boy in a muddy ploughman’s smock. Perhaps twelve, or 
thirteen, standing in his huge shapeless boots about four 
feet seven, and with eager anxiety shining in the vividly blue 
eyes of a very freckled face. 

“Well, my lad, and what do you want?” 

“To work, please, sir,” gulped Stephen. 

“Work!—what work?” James Buckley asked, suspi¬ 
cious of some canting tale invented to cover larceny, and yet 
attracted by the freckled face, with its courageous eyes. 

“Any work as I could do, sir. ... Work about th’ 
Markit.” 

“Groggard!” called Buckley to a shirt-sleeved man, black¬ 
haired and bristly-bearded, and with powerful shoulders, 
who was dealing with a rush of hagglers at the second of 
his two stalls: “Two pun’ ten!” 

“Right you are, Governor! Dawks! Take my job for 

a bit!” J £ 

And the foreman and his assistant being apprised of 
his momentary withdrawal from the vigilant watchfulness 
incumbent on a Governor who would not be plundered, 


120 The Pipers of the Market Place 

James Buckley, subconsciously dealing with his invoices 
and calls and orders, bent a kind, preoccupied look on 
the wearer of the muddy ploughboy’s smock. 

“You want work here, in the Market ? Where d’ye come 
from?” 

“Lives out by Tolleymead, Hertf’rdshire,” and a grimy 
hand waved north. 

“Humph!” James Buckley rubbed his ear. “You talk 
too broad for Herts, strikes me, and I was born and bred 
at St. Albans.” 

“Mother she corned from Leckley, in th’ Coal and Iron 
Parts.” 

“Staffordshire. Well, what’s your name?” 

“Stephen Braby.” 

“Well then, Stephen, mind your book without wasting 
your muscles; grow a foot taller, and we’ll find you a Mar¬ 
ket job in another three or four years. Now be off. I’m 
busy. Groggard!” 

“Ay, ay, Governor!” 

Stephen’s eager face fell dolorously and his heart sat 
down with a bump. 

“Then you couldn’t not find me nothing now?” he began 
and broke down in a whimper. 

“Nothing!” James Buckley was already deep in a pile 
of pencilled invoice-lists. “Till you’re sixteen. At the 
very least. Haven’t you got a father? ‘Yes.’ (For Stephen 
had nodded.) “Well, don’t he do some work?” 

“No!” returned Stephen loudly, his blue eyes darken¬ 
ing with anger. Something was swelling in his breast, and 
he could hardly breathe. 

“What does he do?” asked Buckley, pencilling figures 
on a paper. 

“Nothin’. He drinks—that’s what he do—an’ beats 
an’—beats my mother!” Some floodgate in the boyish 
breast covered by the muddy country smock and the ancient 
sleeved Cardigan had broken, and the pent-up waters burst 
through and rolled down upon Stephen’s soul. . . . “An’— 
an’ I wishes he wer’ Dead, I does!” 

He clenched his fist as he said it, oblivious of the crowd 
about, the glances of Groggard and the assistant, and 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 121 

even the expression on Buckley’s startled face. A change 
came over the face, had Stephen seen, that Lou’s coming 
always brought there. She had tripped back, without her 
Gramp, detained upon some business, in time to hear the 
furious words, and now stood near, quite pale. 

“ ’Nuff o’ that there Old Bailey talk. Be off!” said 
Groggard, the foreman. 

“You’d best!—What is it, Lou, my dear? Tell father, 
little love!” 

For Lou had run to Buckley and caught him by the 
coat-sleeve and looked up at him with her big brown eyes 
shining out of an anxious face. Now she reached higher 
to clasp his neck and draw his head nearer, so that she 
was able to whisper in his ear. It seemed that she had 
heard what the poor boy said, and knew that he was 
naughty, for to want to kill your Daddy was a simply 
awful thing. But his poor mother had been hurt- 

“It’s true he said so, Pretty.” 

“And a boy who loves his mother Can’t be wicked,” 
pleaded Lou. “Can he, Daddy darling?” 

“Now how do I know, my Precious? You must ask 
Groggard. He’s more learned in boys than I am. Here, 
Groggard, what d’ye say?” 

“Not so regular an’ Out an’ Outer but what he might 
be worser . . .” grunted the shirt-sleeved foreman. 
“Accordin’ to my view. And I’ve got seven boys at home, 
confound—Yes, I did mean bless ’em! You come down so 
uncommon sharp on a chap, you know you do, Miss Lou!” 

Stephen had heard nothing of Lou’s innocent defence 
of him, nor knew that her soft eyes followed him as he 
sorrowfully turned away. 

He was on the very brink of the roaring human flood 
that ceaselessly streamed under the murky skies between 
the flower-decked stalls. Another instant and he would 
have been sucked in, and carried, who knows whither, 
but that Lou darted after him and touched him on the 
arm. 

“Boy!” 

As her light hand touched him a strange thrill went 
through Stephen. He turned in dumb amazement to meet 





122 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Lou Buckley's eyes. When Heaven sends its Angels down, 
what can we be but speechless? And the little white fur- 
clad figure was sufficiently dainty to seem something more 
than earthly in the eyes of the common boy. 

“Little boy! ... I was listening when you said bad 
things about your Daddy. Don’t you know how naughty 
it was of you?” 

“I’m nobbut sorry, Miss!” faltered Stephen. “If my 
mother she knowed what I up an’ said just now to Mr. 
Buckley, she’d Hammer me to-rights, she would.” 

“Then don’t say such things any more. For this is 
Christmas Eve, you know, when the Angels sing in Heaven,” 
said Lou looking (it seemed to Stephen) as though two 
stars were drowning in her eyes, “ ‘On Earth Peace to men 
of good will.’ And if you hate your Daddy—even if he 
is cruel—how can you have Peace and good will ?” 

“I’ll say’t no more, Miss. Will that do?” The blue 
eyes looked back steadily out of the freckled boyish face 
that was topped by a mop of yellow curls. 

“Then thank you,—and because I am so sorry, poor boy! 
for you and for your mammy-” 

Lou had kept one of her small hands hidden in a pocket 
of her white woolly jacket. Now the hand came out and 
something was pushed into the boy’s rough palm. A 
bright half-crown with the year’s Mint stamp, glittering, 
magnificent. . . . 

“I can’t not take it from ’e, Miss,” Stephen protested 
thickly, and Lou’s sensitive mouth drooped as he thrust 
her present back. 

“But you can, you can! Gramp gave me two. And I 
have a whole boxful. Mother keeps it back of the shelf 
in the cupboard where she stores the jams.” 

With her slender brown eyebrows raised to her brown 
curls, and her brown eyes shining on him sweetly, and the 
loveliest flush in her small round face, Lou looked wonder¬ 
fully like a rose. But in vain. The big bright splendid 
coin was remorselessly rejected. 

“Then wait,” said Lou imperiously, “and don’t move 
till I come back.” 

The Angel Fairy vanished, and Stephen stood waiting 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 123 

on the margin of the human torrent with his ears full of 
its roar. His heart felt full of something strange—a joy 
that hurt him somehow. And Lou was back beside him, 
with something in her hand. 

“For you, poor boy! ... A rose from my tree that 
father grew for my birthday. . . . ‘Lou Buckley/ I'm 
Lou Buckley. Now tell me your name?” 

“Stephen Braby, ’tis, Miss.” 

“Stephen Braby is a nice name,” said Lou with her 
little air of decision. “Good-bye, Stephen. Give my love 
—Lou Buckley’s love—to your mother, and mind you snip 
the stalk of that rose, and put it in hot water.” 

“I’ll mind to, Miss!” he promised her, “as soon as I get 
home!” 

She was gone, and how poorly he had thanked her! 
But her gift remained in Stephen’s hand, and .lapped him 
in loveliness. . . . 

“ ‘Good-bye, Stephen. Give my love . . / ” 

He said the words over, softly, and looking down at 
the fragile bloom, knew a stab of awful dread. 

Would Lou Buckley live to reach home? For this was 
Saturday morning, and Stephen was to return for supper 
no sooner than Monday night! 

He drooped his head down over her, drinking in her 
perishing loveliness, then thrust himself into the moving 
crowd, and was blindly carried on. 

II 

To be dropped, he knew not how or when, by the many¬ 
legged and many-headed monster. Trodden cabbage- 
leaves were still under his feet and the din of many voices 
filled his ears. 

He stood again in Russell Street. There were the market 
vans and drays jammed down the middle of the thorough¬ 
fare, the fringe of barrows and carts by the kerb, behind 
him the mouth of the Arcade. 

And the rose was no longer in his hand. He uttered 
a howl of anguish, and fell on his knees, grovelling in the 
sticky mud, and whining dole fully: 


124 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“My rose, wherever be her? I had her safe, an’ now 
who’s got her? If I’d dropped her I’d ha’ knowed! . . . 
Consarn they London prigs!” 

A mighty hand grabbed Stephen by the scruff, and lifted 
him from the pavement. 

“Who’s gone? Speak up intelligent!” said the voice of 
authority. 

“Lou Buckley. Somebody’s stole her!” ^ 

“You’re a liar, or I’m a Dutchman!” said constable X. 
of A. Division, dropping Stephen back upon the stones. 
“You’ve obstructed me once already to-day, in my duty 
of regulatin’ the traffic. And,” he added, “if I did my 
dooty I’d have you clapped in jail.” 

“Oh no, please sir!” Stephen babbled, stricken by sheer¬ 
est terror, “I haven’t not done nothing to be locked up for, 
sir, if you please!” 

“What you’d call nothing,” said the constable, looking 
burlier than ever, “is good enough, if I know your sort-” 

“And don’t he!” cried a barrow-man, looking round 
over his shoulder as he took off a pony’s nosebag. “Ho no! 
Not him! He don’t—nor never did!” 

“—is good enough,” repeated No. X. of A., unsoftened 
by this testimony, and blowing out his cheeks importantly, 
“to get you sentenced to a fortnight’s stretch. Or at the 
best a month. In the Juvenile House of Detention,—where 
they’d Diet you, and Drill you, an’ put you under a System, 
till the most unwilling householder as ever grudged Rates 
and Taxes, would know at the first glimpse of you, he’d 
got his money’s worth.” 

“And right you are, Mister!” said the admiring barrow- 
man, throwing the nosebag into the cart and slipping back 
the pony’s bit. “For I’ve seed the results of that System- 
ing myself on a most owldacious youngster. Brought up by 
a virtuous grandmother as weaned ’im on boiled sheeps’- 
trotters which she sold in the public-’ouses, an’ took to a life 
of wickedness as soon as ’e were breeched. Priggin’ from 
shops led to robbin’ kids sent on herrands of their mothers’ 
halfpence; an’ when ’is grandmother turned ’im out o’ doors 
an’ ’e were took to the Union by police, ’e tore ’is togs to 
that extent as for the sake o’ decency ’e were took afore the 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 125 

County Court Beak in a spare pertatur sack. 'Quod is the 
punishment for your offence/ says the Beak, which was a 
kind-’arted genTman. ‘But instead o’ sendin’ of you there 
we’ll try the System on you.’ So though this boy ’e begs 
an’ prays to be sent to quod like other boys, they packs ’im 
orf to the Juvenile ’Ouse of Detention for three months 
systeming! An’ wot, I asts you, is the result ?” 

“Don’t ask me,” said the constable gruffly. . 

“The result is,” continued the barrow-man, “sich a altera¬ 
tion in that boy as ’is own grandmother don’t know ’im 
when the Governors sends ’im ’ome agin to the third-floor- 
back room wot she’s sharin’ with three werry respect¬ 
able families in a lodgin’ ’ouse near Bethnal Green. ’Cos 
why ?” 

“Because, thanks to the System carried on at the 
Juvenile House of Detention,” returned No. X. of A. 
Division, “he had become a well-disciplined Boy. A re¬ 
spectable and self-respectin’ youthful member of the work¬ 
ing-class, instead of a precocious young criminal—which 
was what he’d been before. And if he is an honest Boy 
he’s grateful to the System.” 

“Ah. I believe you,” said the barrow-man, who was 
a sturdy, bow-legged fellow, out of whose square red blue- 
shaven face looked a pair of humorous eyes. “He’s so 
blooming stuck on the System an’ the Rules and all the 
rest of it that ’e can’t be ’appy outside of the House. Pre¬ 
fers walkin’ round an’ round the back-yard to any other 
form o’ hexercise, an’ dry toke an’ skilly to ’taturs an’ fried 
hake. Sings ’ymns—that’s wot that young boy do—till the 
drunken lodgers in the third-floor-back can’t ’ear theirselves 
a-cussin’,—an’ takes cold baths in the cistern till the sober 
ones chucks up cocoa an’ tea, an’ goes in for gin an’ beer.” 

“I believe you !” said the constable, regarding the barrow- 
man sourly. 

“The buti fullest objeck in Natur’ to that boy,” continued 
the barrow-man, urged to wilder flights of fancy by this 
testimony to his veracity, “is a large, loud, pimple-nosed 
p’leeceman walkin’ as if the London flags warnt fit for 
his outsized boots. Dessay you may guess it warnt long 
afore that boy were back under the System. Swop me Bob 


126 The Pipers of the Market Place 

if ’e ain’t so ’omesick for the Rules, an’ the Diet an’ all the 
rest on it, that ’e carnt be ’appy on the outside o’ the Noo 
Juvenile ’Ouse! . . . An’ when the Governors turns ’im 
out—never ’aving dreamed livin’ boy ’ud find their System 
pleasant an’ comfur’ble—’e goes into the Workus; an’ no 
sooner is ’e landed there, than ’e tears up all ’is clo’es. On 
which ’e’s naturally took afore the Beak, an’ sent back to 
be Systemed an’ Dieted—an’ so the game’s bin goin’ on for 
three or four years. Wot that boy’ll do w’en ’is whiskers 
grows an’ ’e gits too old for Systeming fair beats me ” said 
Mr. Faggis, “an’ that’s the solemn truth!” 

“Die of a broken ’art, per’aps,” said the constable sar¬ 
castically, “or be put away in a ’sylum for- imbeciles, sup¬ 
posin’ that story o’ yours true. But I’ve met your sort be¬ 
fore now, ‘B. Faggis, Licensed Hawker,’—supposing that’s 
your own name as you’ve got on your barrow there?” 

He jerked a thumb, covered with a big white woollen 
glove, at the natty dark green barrow, newly picked out 
with flourishes of red and yellow and white. And Stephen, 
catching the humorous eye, and the quirky smile of B. 
Faggis, recognized the hawker who had bought the clock, 
and given him the rose-painted plate. 

“Which I put it to you, Shaver” (B. Faggis was address¬ 
ing Stephen) “as to whether you’re able to testify to having 
seed me afore ? On my bis’ness round, with this here prad 
and this identical barren This very day a twelvemonth 
back, might be a day less or more.” He went on with his 
professional hoarseness, and his humorous twinkle on 
Stephen. “When I come round from ‘The Pure Drop’ 
after seeing of your Father, and fotch away from your 
little place—with your Mother’s consent and leave-” 

“The clock!” began Stephen; “and-” 

“Clock it were!” corroborated B. Faggis. “Tall hold 
hoak, with a square brass face, and a Ship in full Sail, and 
a Moon. . . . An’ a Corner Cupboard—with a Pair o’ 
Blue Dutch Candlesticks. An’ two Crockery Spaniels on it, 
also a Plate wiv the Dook o’ Wellin’ton—which I ’ave that 
Corner Cupboard now at my Place in Lower ’Olloway, the 
harticles as were inside it ’aving bin sold.” 

“All right! Since you know this boy, you Faggis, and 




How Stephen Fell in hove with a Rose 127 

his parents-” The large hand of the constable relaxed, 

and Stephen was free. ‘‘Take him away and don’t let me 
catch him loafing about the Market ... You hear?” 

And as X. of A. Division turned his beefy back and 
strode into the traffic of Russell Street- 

“I ’ear. You, Shaver, nip up in the barrer an’ tie on 
this bit o’ prickly,” said the hawker, pitching Stephen a 
coil of clothes-line, and topping his ample load of fruit 
and flowers and vegetables with holly and mistletoe. “And 
mind you tie your knots to hold—for—between you an’ 
me an’ the prad here,—my Missus would as soon set down 
to fish an’ chips for ’er hannual Crismiss dinner, as to Roast 
loin o’ pork with stuffin’ an’ apple sauce, veges, and Plum 
Pudding, to foiler, if she hadn’t got a bit of berried holly 
to stick about the room. That’s the sort my Missus is, 
Shaver, and when you see her-” 

“See her, sir?” hesitated Stephen, looking at the hawker 
with rounded eyes through the branches that came between. 

“An’ when you claps your eyes on ’er, for you should 
be a judge o’ fine wimmen,” pursued B. Faggis, “with a 
Mother such as Smiler and me can take oath to your 
’aving got at ’ome—you’ll say as she’s (with one excep¬ 
tion being the said mother referred to) the chicest pick 
of the basket—and the topmost berry in the punnet, and the 
best cook as ever roasted a loin of Wiltshire pork. Which, 
Luck bein’ with us and nothink again us!—you’re going to 
’ave a cut off for dinner at ’arf-past twelve noon to-morrer, 
being good old Crismiss Day. To-day—being Sat’day, 111 
bet a mag,—fried liver an’ bacon an’ mashed ’taturs is wot 
she’s keepin’ ’ot in the oven, an’ prob’ly an apple turnover. 
Pass me them leathers, an’ hold on tight. Now, Smiler, git 
away!” 

And the hawker assumed the reins and whip, and tickled 
up the prad so effectively that Smiler put down his head, 
and refused to get away at all. Persuaded at length 
to make a start, he did so with reluctance, but no 
sooner were they out of the neighbourhood of the Market, 
than a sense of duty, fortified by recollections of his stable, 
started him into a rattling trot, which lasted till their jour¬ 
ney’s end. 





128 


The Pipers of the Market Place 


12 

In Lower Holloway (even at this date connected with 
the City and West End, not only by the Great Northern 
Railway and a service of omnibuses, but by tram-lines 
newly laid)—upon the left of the thoroughfare named 
Joram’s Road, there stood a row of old tiled brick houses, 
with solid timbers of ancient oak bulging from the masonry 
of their jutting upper storeys, those on the ground-level 
having been converted into shops. 

A double-fronted shop in the middle of the row dis¬ 
played a dusty, blistered board above its dusty windows, 
announcing B. and S. Faggis to be Dealers in Second Hand 
Furniture and Antiques. Certain parallelograms of fly- 
spotted paper, stuck to the dusty window-glass by divers 
gelatine wafers, added in inky capitals: 

‘BoGHT or XcHaNgD,’ and hinted at ‘LiBral TerMs.’ 

Behind these luring promises reigned a wilderness of 
household articles, impartially veiled in cobwebs and liber¬ 
ally coated with dust; ranging from four-post bedsteads of 
mahogany and oak, with carven posts, and canopies like 
pulpit sounding-boards, to rocking-chairs of painted deal 
masquerading as rosewood; and kitchen tables with one 
real drawer, and a handle pretending to be another. 

Beyond a wave of the whip-hand, pointing out the dusty 
windows and the dusty store of movables piled up behind 
them, B. Faggis made no reference to the shop, which was 
evidently his joy and pride, but getting down, and leading 
the prad through a gate under a wooden archway, dis¬ 
covered a yard, containing a kennel, inhabited by a husky 
watchdog, in addition to a pump, a cart-shed and a stable, 
where he put up the pony and left him to his rack of hay. 
Then, locking the barrow in the shed and promising Stephen 
that he should bear a hand at unloading her presently, the 
hawker mentioned that as his Missus was something par¬ 
ticular in the matter of cleanliness, he begged to recommend 
his young friend to try a sluice at the pump. The sluicing 
achieved with the aid of a cloth, a bit of soap and a bucket, 
and Stephen’s boots having been improved by being pumped 
on and wiped over, Faggis relieved his guest of the muddied 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 129 

smock, “Which however you look at it,” he remarked, “ain’t 
no company tog nohow, and had best be left a-soakin’ for 
my Missus to* wash out.” 

Thus Stephen, guiltless of mud and gore, entered the 
tidy double front-kitchen in the basement under the shop 
via the rearward scullery, and tugged his yellow forehead- 
lock to Faggis’s Phoenix, upon the introduction of his hos¬ 
pitable host. 

This very Phoenix among wives was a red-cheeked, 
black-haired, black-eyed little woman, squat and dusky like 
her dwelling, and as irreproachably neat, clean and trim. 
Following up her hearty shake of the hand with a homely 
word or so of welcome, she proceeded, while Faggis fetched 
the beer, to dish the dinner up and little more was said 
until the meal, which consisted of hot tripe and onions, 
with floury boiled potatoes and an immense treacle pud¬ 
ding, had been served and eaten, and Faggis had lighted 
his pipe. 

“The boy brought the paper, Missus, I suppose?” he 
asked of his domestic Phoenix, burrowing in the bowl of 
the blackened clay with a hairpin borrowed from her. 

“And shoved it in under the shop-door,” said Mrs. Fag¬ 
gis. “An’ then cut away, an’ hooked it.” 

“Wivout puttin’ up the shutters, as I seed, for which 
negleck,” said Mr. Faggis, “I promise myself to Deal 
with that same boy. Bring ’im to ’ave a properer sense of 
Dooty to ’is employers-” 

“You’ve often tried before, Ben dear,” said his partner, 
cheerfully. 

“I shall try behind, this time, old gal,” said the hawker, 
taking the paper, “with a bit of ash-plant I’ve laid by. An’ 
if that don’t work, he goes!” 

“There’s Carols at the Old Church this afternoon,” said 
Mrs. Faggis, rather wistfully. “Pre’aps he’s took his 
mother down to hear the singin’, Ben. So why be cross 
because the boy’s not here to read the bits o’ news to you? 
There never was a man so fond of hearing the newspapers 
read! . . . And you’ve got such a stupid ignorant old wife 
that words in three letters is her limit, though she can 
write after a fashion, if only to sign her name.” 



130 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“As Witness to a Dockyment, such as a Will,” said 
Faggis, “in a good bold round ’and—me making my mark 
with a criss-cross underneath the same.” 

“Now, Ben! Whatever’s bin an’ brought that back into 
your knowledge-box ? What are you studying over in that 
queer crinkled way?” 

Mrs. Faggis’s concern arose because Faggis was wrink¬ 
ling his forehead into folds of crimson leather and staring 
across the table at the unconscious guest For Stephen, 
yielding to the seductive warmth and cosiness of the kitchen, 
and replete with tripe and onions, mashed potatoes and 
treacle-roll, sprawled in a chintz-cushioned arm-chair of 
the ancient Windsor pattern, with fast-shut eyes, and half- 
opened mouth, a boy blissfully asleep. 

“Don’t wake him, Ben!” said the womanly soul; “He’s 
a pretty, fair-haired fellow, ain’t he? Nor it’s not so long 
since you an’ me had such a one of our own! But don’t 
you go to thinking as I’m anything but content and happy, 
with my good husband alive and well, and business thriving 
as it do. If I’m a little low at times, it’s just my woman’s 
fashion of lookin’ past the good I’ve got to the good that 
once I had! But even you at times, Ben dear, though you 
alius’ meet me cheerful—you stop longer in the little back 
attic that was his—than you used to do before!” 

“Why, Gord bless the little creetur’!” Faggis protested en¬ 
ergetically, “wot uncommon queer fancies she does get in 
her cokernut, To be sure!” 

“No fancies, Ben. It’s what I’ve seen. Ten years it is 
since we lost him, an’ locked away his little clothes and 
toys in the room he called his own . . . But how come 
the football an’ the fishin’ rod there,—and the skates, an’ 
the concertina, if it wasn’t that to comfort your own pore 
heart you sometimes made believe he was alive!” 

“Like the barmy hold widder o’ ninety-one which ’er 
’usband ’ad croaked on ’is ’oneymoon, ’an for sivinty year 
kep’ ’is silk top ’at a ’angin’ in the front ’all. An’ ’is stick 
an’ umbreller in the stand, an’ ’is razor on the lookin’ glass. 
Though she might ’ave ’ad a use for that,” said Faggis, “on 
’er own. Blowed if I don’t clear the back attic out an’ 
sell off them things next Toosday!” 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 131 

“You couldn’t, Ben! You’d find it go agin you if you 
tried. An’—I made the patchwork quilt, an’ hung up the 
stuffed canary. I’m as bad as you if it comes to that!” 
She laughed, with tears in her eyes. 

“Is the truckle-bed there big enough for this ’ere young 
Shaver to kip in ? An’ haired enough, so as ’e won’t ketch 
cold in ’is innercent young nose?” 

Faggis rapped his pipe, which didn’t seem to draw, and 
blew through the stem smartly. 

“Why, yes, Ben. Don’t I keep it fit for the Prince o’ 
Wales hisself!” 

“Being so,” said the hawker, “I puts it to you, as we 
keeps the Shaver till to-morrer?” 

“And longer,” said Mrs. Faggis cheerfully, “if his 
mother’s willin’, and won’t fret?” 

“Not her. She’s give him—that’s wot ’e says as we 
come along from the Markit—Free Leave till supper-time 
Monday night.” 

“Then he’s welcome as the flowers in May to the best 
that we can spare him. But if a boy like him was mine,” 
said Mrs. Faggis, shaking her head, “I’d know my bless- 
in’s well enough to keep ’im close beside me, not wanderin’ 
the London streets with cadgers an’ the like.” 

“An’ so would she, I’ll bet a bob! But if you seed the 

Swipey Cove that boy ’as got for a father you’d- 

What, you’ve woke up, have you, old son!” cried Faggis 
in a cheerful tone. “In time to tell my Missus your name! 
Tip it us clear, now! Out wiv it! 'Stephen Braby!’ 
Braby, d’ye pipe?” said Faggis, as Stephen obeyed. He 
looked at his wife, who had flushed bright red, and was 
panting and fanning herself with her apron, rather as 
though the dinner had disagreed with her, Stephen thought. 
But at this juncture Faggis rapped smartly on the table. 
“Pre’aps you’ll oblige next, Shaver,” said the hawker, 
“with the name of your respected Governor, and tack 
your address to that. Come! Give it mouth, my 
lad!” 

He repeated after Stephen: 

“Wilfrid Braby, Esquire, The Cottage, Tolley Farm 
Wheatacres, Tolley Brook Road, Tolleymead, Hertford- 


132 The Pipers of the Market Place 

shire. Not more’n a couple o’ mile from Brabycott House 

and Park.” . , . 

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” the good woman cried, help¬ 
lessly looking at Stephen. “Fifteen- No! Sixteen 

years ago, it were! How it all comes back, Ben, dear. 
Me a young widow just out of crape and weepers for my 

first one-” . , 

“And me a tidy young bachelor with an eye to steppin 
into his shoes. And you bein’ took with a wish for coun¬ 
try air, an’ a sight of the fields an’ hedges, I druv of you 
down to Hertfordshire in August, Eighteen Fifty-Five. In 
the identical barrer now standin’ in our shed,” said Faggis, 
retrospectively, “with ole Scruncher, my wicious one-eyed 
mule, between the shafts that day. German sausages he 
made long years ago—but there never was a mule to beat 
fim! An’ gettin’ a Nint of Bargains to be ’ad, from a 
bloke we met at East Marnet, I turns out of my Beat for 
Brabycott, an’ asts for to see the Squire. And a pretty 
Squire he were too. A sour old Curmudgeon!” 

“S’sh!” His wife shook a finger warningly and nodded 
at their sleepy guest. “His grandfather you’re talkin’ of. 
What I can’t abear to think is, that that there Will we 
witnessed has robbed this poor dear boy!” 

Stephen wondered how he had been robbed, who never 
had owned anything. 

“Robbed be jiggered,” said the hawker, puffing clouds of 
strong tobacco. “What’s come to your ’ead-piece, Missus, 
as is usual so clear? Don’t you know as well as me this 
young Shaver warn’t Born nor Thought on, when we went 
down to Hertfordshire and witnessed that there Will?” 

13 

By this time the reiteration of Brabycott and these re¬ 
corded references to a Will, had revived some long-for¬ 
gotten things in the memory of the boy. That November 
when the Shadow had fallen on Steve’s happy life with his 
mother—though but little more than a year ago, seemed 
far away and dim. But certain points in the story told 
by Rumbold to Mackilliveray in the tap of The Pure Drop’ 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 133 

one November night remained clear in Stephen’s brain. 
Here they came cropping up again in talk between two 
strangers, who had shown him hospitality, and to whom 
his heart had warmed. 

“Ah, dear, dear!” said Mrs. Faggis. “Many, many years 
ago. In the August—as now I mind!—of Eighteen Fifty- 
Five. Just as you and me finished our little meal—which 
I’d brought in my covered basket-” 

“A cold Meat Pie,” interpolated Faggis, “washed down 
with a quart of ale.” 

“And as we packed the basket again, and you lighted 
your pipe,” said Mrs. Faggis, “the old gentleman—Mr. 
Braby—comes out of the house into the stable-yard. Scowl¬ 
ing so bitter and so black that the sunshine seems to darken, 
and I said to myself that pre’aps the meat pie hadn’t bin’ 
so good arter all. And hearin’ that we’ve come to bid for 
the beds, in what used to be the stable-men’s sleepin’-loft, 
he takes us up the ladder himself, and shows us what is 
there. And then—as I’m a-saying to myself, 'What a sour 
and grim old man you are! an’ what in the world with 
sharp edges have you got buttoned inside your coat?’ he 
asks you whether you can write, and whether I’m anything 
of a scholard?—and pulls a long folded paper out, and 
asks us to witness his Will. Which we did—Me writing 
'Amelia Byles, Widow,’ in every one of the eight corners, 
with 'Licensed Coster’ arter, having my own business 
then-” 

“And me putting my Criss-Cross mark to my name— 
which you’d wrote underneath your own for me,” Faggis 
broke in at this point. “An’ he blots the flourish at the 
end. Of his name in full on the Last Page, and, says he, 
as gruff as a mastiff, 'In the Presence. Of You, my Wit¬ 
nesses. I De-livers my Hack an’ Deed! Now what d’ye 
offer for these Truckle-Beds an’ Washstands?’ And swelp 
me ’taters! if the old bloke don’t spend arf-an’-’our ’agglin’ 
over eightpence, on the werry last day ’e ’as to live, in this 
’ere bloomin’ world! For ’e ups and dies, a-setting in ’is 
arm-chair, no more nor a Nour arterwards. Which proves 
wot an un’ealthy thing it is to make your Will.” 

“Ah! Never were a truer word spoke in jest,” said 



134 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Mrs. Faggis to Stephen. “As my Great Aunt Gann could 
witness to, if ’er sperrit ’overed near. The oldest Inmate 
of the Female Ward she were of Poplar Work’ouse an’ 
cost the Parish Ten shillings a week for close on Forty 
Year. An’ might ’ave been alive and smiling now at the 
sight of a Bag of Peppermints an' a Nounce an’ a naif of 
’igh-dried snuff, which I took ’er every month,—but that 
she ’ad it put in ’er ’ead as the Thousand Pound ’er keep 
’ad cost the Parish Ratepayers were a Investment—payable 
at ’er Disease to ’er Nearest Relative. Which nothing 
would pacify that dear Soul, but making a Will an’ Testa¬ 
ment, leavin’ the Money to ’er beloved great-niece, in return 
for what she’d done. As an Example, so she ses, as ’ow 
Filial Kindness is Rewarded! An’ passed away, peaceful 
as a babe, after signin’ the Will before Witnesses,—which 
were the Doctor and the Matron—in a lovely copper-plate 
’and. At Ninety-eight, an’ I ’ad to pay One Pound for 
the Lawyer’s paper, an’ Two Pound Ten—not bein’ 
grudged! to Save ’er from a Parish Burial.” 

“Perish me pink, Missus! if my bonce ain’t fairly spin- 
nin’!” exclaimed Faggis, “betwixt you an’ your great-Aunt 
Gann! See the boy’s eyes poppin’ out of ’is ’ead like a brace 
o’ bluey marbles, tryin’ to keep up along of you, runnin’ 
ahead full steam!” 

“It’ll seem more nat’ral to him by an’ by,” said the 
pleasant woman, smiling at Stephen, who smiled and 
nodded back again with the greatest of good will. 

“As the Omnibus Com’ny said,” retorted Faggis, “w’en 
they made the bus-’orse climb a ladder for to git into ’is 
stable. Though I’ve bin spliced to yer for sixteen years, 
an’ ain’t got used to it yet!” 

“We got married in the October o’ the same year in 
which we ’ad that meetin’ with your grandfather,” said 
Mrs. Faggis to Stephen, “on what turned out to be, as 
Faggis says, the very last day of his life. An’ the Will 
we witnessed being lost,—you do know what’s meant by 
a Will, don’t you?” Stephen nodded, and she continued, 
“The Property went to your Aunt, Miss Ann. Which she 
died two year arterwards, I don’t know of what com¬ 
plaint.” 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 135 

“Smallpox, ma’am, please,” supplied Stephen, “an’ they 
buried her under the Liar’s Stone that’s on the Tower o’ 
Tolleymead Church.” 

“Wot stone, my boy?” 

“The Liar’s Stone,” said Stephen. “With the verse o* 
poetry on it, all about Hell and such-like, as were made by 
the Wicked Man.” 

“My Goodness me!” Mrs. Faggis gasped as Stephen re¬ 
peated the epitaph. “He knowed where he were a-goin’ to, 
anyways—which is more than some of us do!” 

“I’ll lay that Miss Hann, or whatever were her name, 
thought she were be’ayvin’ like a Christian,” said the 
hawker, “when she left all the Property to Strangers an’ 
cut off her only brother with a ring! Eighteen Fifty-Seven 
bein’ the year she died, an’ he went to Law to git the 
Property, and Tusser, Worrill an’ Stickey of Furnival’s 
Inn, hadvertised in the papers offering a Reward of Three 
Guineas for the address of Any Person who had seen a 
Will in the Possession of the Late Geoffrey Thomasson 
Braby of Brabycott, as far back as the Fourteenth of Au¬ 
gust, Eighteen Fifty-Five.” 

“So, knowing what we did, my dear,” said Mrs. Faggis, 
as she looked across at Stephen, “me and Faggis wrote a 
answer to the address as was given in the Paper—and 
called on them Lawyers in Furnival’s Inn, to be questioned 
on our oath. And you remember, don’t you, Ben?” she 
continued, “how they told us, that in that Will we’d wit¬ 
nessed, every penny went to Braby’s son. Which being 
father to this here boy (an’ when you told me his name 
just now, my inside turned right over), don’t tell me as 
he isn’t robbed, because you know he is!” 

She looked across at Stephen now, with motherly con¬ 
cern and pity, and went on, smoothing her apron down 
with rough hard-working hands. 

“A nice fresh-coloured, fair-haired lad as any parents 
might be proud of. I’d say it if they walked among the 
greatest in the land. And through the losin’ of that Will, 
instead of bein’ eddicated with his class and kind, an’ be- 
comin’ a young gentleman, he’s been brought up as rough 
an’ coarse as the son of a common workin’ man!” 


136 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Stephen felt scalded by the words, though they were 
kindly spoken. The blood in his veins seemed mingled 
now with something that pricked and stung. He snuggled 
back into the chair and hid his hot face against the cushion. 
But Faggis was answering his wife. And Stephen lis¬ 
tened again. ? f 

“A sober, decent workin’ man, we’ll ’ope, an not a 
Swipey Customer, which is wot ’e ’as to stand to him in 
the place of a Governor. Think if the Property ’ad come 
to , im! My bloomin’ stars and garters! See ’im at the 
Tap at Tolleymead to-day, tippin’ the quarterns down!” 

“Mind the boy, and don’t be uncharitable, Ben!” pleaded 
the gentle woman. “What chance ’ad that pore creetur’ ’ad, 
treated as ’e ’as been?” 

It had never before occurred to Braby’s son that the 
Enemy might be an object for pity, or that, apart from 
Malvina he could be regarded without disgust. But the 
compassionate words from these honest lips softened him 
towards the wretched father, who had made such ruin of 
his own life, and brought misery and want into their home. 


14 

“Think of him kind,” said Mrs. Faggis, nodding at 
Stephen earnestly, “or try to if you ain’t able, which is 
somethin’ arter all. Rather than speak bad things of him, 
swaller ’em an’ say nothin’! An’ because, being weak, the 
loss of all he might have had, has crushed and blighted 
him, make up your mind as Poverty ain’t a-going to dis¬ 
courage You! Don’t be ashamed of honest work, of what¬ 
ever kind it may be. So long as it brings you bed and 
board, it’s fit for you to do. Not but wot I ’ave wondered 
’ow a young gal I knowed could ’ave learned Pinking from 
’er Father—him being a Nundertaker in a Cheap an’ pop’lar 
Line. But though Pillers in Coffins you must ’ave for to 
be buried respectable—not even with Frills about my face 
cut out in stars an’ such, would I lay my ’ead on shavin’s 
till the soundin’ of the Trumpet. Bein’ not only crackly, 
but-” 

“Stow it, Missus, d’jeer! With your corfins an’ trum- 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 137 

pets,” roared Faggis, appalled by the mortuary turn as¬ 
sumed by the conversation, “you’re makin’ the ’air stand 
up on me ’ead, an’ the Shaver shake in ’is shoes! Though 
a proper young Shaver I should call ’im myself, an’ a 
credit to ’is mother. Which, ’cordin’ to talk I chanced to 
hear at the public Tap at Tolleymead, she kep’ ’im in Curls 
an’ Petticoats, till a year an’ an ’arf ago!” 

“Then his mother did ought to be ashamed of herself,” 
exclaimed the wife indignantly, as Stephen squirmed with 
anguish in the arms of the Windsor chair. “What could 
she ha’ bin thinkin’ of, the silly little creetur’!” 

“Little ain’t the word azackly, for she’s the biggest 
woman I ever see. An’ the ’andsomest. All but one,” 
said Faggis, winking, “an’ I reckins you knows ’oo she is. 
Not as you’re to call a Whopper, but more on the Ban¬ 
tam side. So give us a kiss, old lady, an’ mix us another 
jorum, an’ stir it with your little finger, so it won’t want 
sugar in! Pipe that sound o’ people clearin’ their throats. 
Twig that shufflin’ on the flagstones!” cried the hawker, 
as a ring at the stable-yard gate was followed by the bark¬ 
ing of the dog. “That’s the Choir come round from the 
Church, for to tip us the Carols, I lay! Cut, Shaver, an’ 
undo ole Towser’s chain, an’ shut ’im up in the coal-cellar, 
or ’e’ll git the Curate by the pants, like ’e did last Chrismiss 
Eve! Missus, you remembers? An’ frightened the young 
ladies so bad that they ’ad to ’old on to the young gen’l’men. 
. . . Stop!” yelled Faggis, as Stephen made for the door. 
“Towser ain’t acquainted with you, an’ Legs bein’ his 
weakness, I’ll go myself, havin’ got to fetch the Oranges 
from the barrer outside ^ . . Git out them Bottles o’ Gin¬ 
ger Wine, an’ set out the clean glasses, Missus, likewise 
the Pound of Acid Drops, which Carollers are partial to. 
An’ the tin of Mixed Biscuits, mind you don’t forgit, young 
ladies bein’ sweet on ’em, though crumby for the upper 
notes is wot I find myself.” 

And Faggis vanished into the backyard containing the 
pump, and shed and stable, to subdue the protests of the 
husky dog against the admission of the Choir. Which 
musical body, at first conjectural through frosty fog, ere 
long materialized into at least a dozen young ladies, muf- 


138 The Pipers of the Market Place 

fled against December colds in fur-trimmed jackets and 
woollen clouds, and an equal number of capped and great- 
coated young gentlemen. Who, shepherded by the Curate, 
panoplied, in respect to the husky dog, in stout black leather 
gaiters, invaded the precincts of Faggis’s back-yard. Here 
they prepared to sing, by the light of several smoky lan¬ 
terns, but Faggis would not hear of this, and so they all 
trooped inside, to be welcomed by his cordial wife in the 
comfortable precincts of the kitchen, whose rafters, with 
such heartening and familiar Christmas Carols as ‘God Rest 
You, Merry Gentlemen/ ‘While Shepherds Watched Their 
Flocks by Night/ and ‘Hark the Herald Angels/ the young 
gentlemen and ladies presently caused to ring. When a 
pause in the entertainment came, the array of clean bright 
glasses which figured on the table, were filled from the 
bottles of Ginger Wine, and a muster of cups and saucers 
hospitably flanking these, were frothed to the brim from a 
giant jug of boiling cocoa. While the oranges in two 
piled-up dishes, a portly bag of acid drops and the Mixed 
Biscuits previously referred to, were hospitably pressed by 
Faggis and his wife on the unreluctant guests. 

Stephen uncommonly enjoyed going round with these 
luxuries, saying: “Do, Miss, take another,” or “Please, 
try an acid, they’re good for the throat!” And he got 
quite a thrill when he was smiled upon by the youngest 
and prettiest lady soloist, who had brown curls that strayed 
upon her shoulders, and eyes that reminded him of Lou’s. 

“Do you sing?” the young lady asked him, as he brought 
her a cup of cocoa. “No! Yet you have a singing face. 
Hasn’t he, George?” And the young gent whom she ad¬ 
dressed as ‘George’ sulkily grunted in answer: 

“Oh, bosh, Jessie!” 

Why should he grunt at Jessie, if she did call him 
George? And why wasn’t Jessie angry instead of looking 
pleased? Stephen conceived a hatred for the young gen¬ 
tleman named George, who possessed luxuriant black side- 
whiskers. In addition to a pretematurally deep bass voice 
(which, when in the character of Good King Wenceslaus 
he ordered his retainers to Bring him meat and bring him 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 139 

wine, drove Towser, the husky watch-dog, into ecstasies of 
barking in the cellar). 

But the young ladies, pretty or plain, and the young 
men, including the black-whiskered George, trooped pres¬ 
ently away with the Curate, calling back, ‘Merry Christ¬ 
mas’ and ‘A Happy New Year,’ and Faggis ran after 
them to put something that chinked into the slit of the 
money-box, and came back again with frosty fog in his 
throat and hair and eyelashes, and let Towser out of the 
cellar, and chained him in the yard again. And a supper 
of bread and cold meat and cheese ‘and Cocoa for the boy 
because it’s best for him,’ with hot spiced beer for Faggis 
and his Missus, ended the glorious day. A day of days 
in Stephen’s life, most wondrous and unforgettable, the 
story of which he has told to his grandchildren many a 
time since. 

Faggis went out at half-past nine—he said to see his 
tailor. And Stephen went happily to the truckle-bed in 
the little attic bedroom, which was spotlessly clean and cosy, 
and kept warm by the kitchen flue. 

And wakened at Twelve, all snug and warm in clean 
sheets and woollen blankets, with the feeling that his mother 
had been in to look at him, and had kissed him as he slept. 
And the room was full of Christmas chimes from bells 
both near and distant (mingled with the snoring of the 
couple who slept on the other side of the partition wall). 
So Stephen went to sleep again, to wake with the sunshine 
on his eyelids, to the first Christmas morning he had ever 
spent from home. 

At the foot of the bed stood a rush-bottomed chair, with, 
displayed to the best advantage, a new suit of clothes of 
Stephen’s size, cheap and common, but warm and comfort¬ 
able. ‘For SteveN BraBy from 2 Trew fRenDs,’ said a 
paper pinned on the jacket, and there was a peaked cloth 
cap to match, and a necktie of bright blue. 

And he spent the day with his new friends. So humble, 
yet compared with Stephen, so rich in the world’s goods 
and gear, and went, in the new clothes, with them to Church. 
. . . And came back to a Christmas banquet of Roast Loin 


140 The Pipers of the Market Place 

of Pork and Plum Pudding, shared by a merry gathering 
of half a dozen guests. 

And they had Spiced Negus after dinner, with apples 
and nuts and oranges, and played cards for counters, and 
sang songs, to the accompaniment of the melodeon. And 
when under the mistletoe the ladies of the party were sa¬ 
luted, Stephen kissed his motherly hostess, and did it with 
a will. 

And so ended another glorious day, unclouded save at 
moments, when Stephen knew a pang of regret at the loss 
of Lou Buckley’s rose. Though the gift of the flower from 
that childish hand had brimmed his heart with sweetness. 
That sweetness which when first it comes, we cannot even 
name. 


15 

On the afternoon of Boxing Day, fortified by a sub¬ 
stantial dinner, Stephen set out upon the road that led to¬ 
wards his home. He wore the brand-new suit of clothes 
and the new cap and necktie and Faggis had added a pair 
of boots that fitted, and were barely worn. 

So he bade good-bye to his kindly friends, and the pony 
‘Smiler,’ and the watch-dog, and the corner-cupboard, and 
Mrs. Parmint’s clock, with the Moon and the Ship on its 
square brass face, presiding over a dusty maze of Antiques 
and modern furniture in the rearward part of the shop. 

The old garments made a bundle that was heavier than 
the first, but the dozen or so of oranges that Mrs. Faggis had 
slipped in, and the whack of cold plum pudding that was 
wrapped in a clean cloth (so that Mrs. Braby, the giver said, 
might judge as to her cooking), rather took from, than 
added to the weight of it. 

Tramping, then, and getting occasional lifts behind 
empty market-vans, Stephen reached East Finchley, accom¬ 
plishing the rest of the journey home in the donkey-cart of 
a sweep. Washed as a tribute to holiday-time, and looking 
unnaturally pallid in consequence, the sweep was going over 
to Tolleymead to sup and spend the night, and the following 
day, with a married daughter there. And so they quitted 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 141 


the Great North Road, for the road that ran by the Branch 
Line, and the Tolley Brook, that had accompanied Steve all 
the way from Tolleymead to Finchley (hurrying south to be 
the Brent River, and widen into the great Reservoir) grew 
smaller and smaller and beautifully less, until, a mere runnel 
of brown water, wimpling over watercress-clumps and bent- 
grass, between banks that are high and steepish, you take it 
with a running jump, or soberly cross the stepping-stones 
that are dry-topped most of the year. 

“Not but what in Janiwerry an’ Febiwerry I have 
knowed the Brook in Flood here,” said the sweep, as he 
pulled up to let Stephen get down, and accepted threepence 
for pay. “Good evenin', sonny. Tell the gals from me, 
you'll be a man before your mother!” 

And the sweep, hoarsely chuckling, vanished into the dusk 
as Tolleymead Church clock whanged five. It wanted half 
an hour yet to supper-time at the Wheatacres, so Stephen 
jumped the Tolley Brook and went for a stroll round the 
Green. 

Being Boxing Day, the Post Office and the baker s were 
shut up, and the furtive gleams of lamplight showing at 
Thickbroom’s chandlery meant no more than the ordinary 
Saturday’s run on the chandler’s treacle-keg. Peering in, 
Stephen could see a queue of jam-pots and cups and mugs, 
and bowls, standing on the floor in the neighbourhood of the 
slowly dreeling peg-hole, to which lighted matches and 
candle-ends had to be applied, to produce any treacle at all. 

Mrs. Thickbroom said, Put down your mug or cup or 
bowl or jam-pot and look in again in an hour or two, but 
she made no promises at all. She did her best, as typified by 
the tallow and burnt match-stumps and so-forth you found 
in your treacle when you got it—and as she very justly said, 
no woman could do more. 

Treacle was uncertain in its ways and affected by the 
weather. Mrs. Thickbroom said it—and nobody had a 
better right to say. On her weekly wash-day the reluctance 
of the keg to produce treacle was wonderful, and its parsi¬ 
mony was equally pronounced on a Festival or Bank 


Holiday. 

The sagas of Tolleymead enshrine the tale of a chill sus- 


142 The Pipers of the Market Place 

tained by a resident, whose wife knew that treacle Posset 
was the one thing to break the chill. The dramatic climax 
is the meeting between the treacle and the patient,—the 
one coming out of his house screwed down, and on his way 
to be buried; as the other, borne by a little girl—arrives at 
the corpse's door. . . . 

A cheerier story, dealing with the tardiness of treacle, 
tells of an expectant mother who projected treacle tarts. 
When she quitted the chandler’s, leaving her bowl at the 
end of the queue near the peg-hole, it was close on half-past 
nine o’clock of the first Monday in August, when red 
Victoria plums are ripe, and the Roundabouts pitch on the 
Green. When the customer looked in on Friday, wheeling 
twins in a perambulator (an article of double capacity 
having figured on the list of wedding gifts), the treacle was 
coiling down into the bowl as languidly as when she had 
left it, and the bowl—this is the marvellous thing—was not 
yet half-full. 

The little bell over the shop-door tinkled as Stephen 
entered, and a queer conglomeration of ancient smells 
rushed at him out of the murk. There was Mrs. Thick- 
broom, back of the shop (a study in foreshortening), bend¬ 
ing over the keg (as much as her figure allowed bending) 
talking to a female friend who had come in to fetch her 
treacle,—for interminably as the treacle trickled out of the 
keg, did the gossip of Tolleymead trickle out of Mrs. Thick- 
broom, as she alternately applied the candle-flame to the peg- 
hole, and rummaged in its recesses with a skewer. What 
little light was in the place got hopelessly lost in the en¬ 
deavour to illuminate the wilderness of vendables that 
obliterated its walls and floor. And hung from its cob- 
webbed rafters, were hams, bootlaces and crinolines, skip¬ 
ping-ropes and clothes-lines and balls of string in nets. 

# Cheese, hearthstone, brooms, ginger-beer, mouse-traps and 
pickled pork and sausages, sides of bacon, pig’s-cheek, hanks 
of yarn for knitting socks, tins of cocoa and Patent Foods. 
Tinned Australian Mutton and Tinned Australian Beef, 
with mysterious brands upon them; jars of rhubarb jam 
for retail, and penny bottles of castor oil, camphorated oil 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 143 

and pickles, firewood, bull’s-eyes, and matches, were sold by 
Mrs. Thickbroom at her chandlery on the Green. 

A blue gallipot Stephen recognized as belonging to his 
Masterpiece, stood on the end of the counter with a bat- 
tallion of filled mugs and cups. The sight of it plucked at 
the boy’s heart as the little door-bell jangled; and Mrs. 
Thickbroom stemmed the flow of her inexhaustible stream 
of gossip with her characteristic ‘Pumpf.’ 

I refer to a sound, curious and unique, which might thus 
be phonetically rendered. Not a gasp, nor a snort, not a 
grunt nor a wheeze, but partaking of their combined nature, 
—Mrs. Thickbroom being the victim of a number of com¬ 
plaints, which ‘blocked her passages’ as she said. 

As ‘troubles’ she referred to the said complaints, which 
began with asthmatic trouble. A bronchial trouble and a 
trouble in the head (termed ‘snuffles’ by irreverent folks) 
combined with a rheumatic trouble, a neuralgic trouble and 
a heart-trouble, resulted in the blocking of Mrs. Thick- 
broom’s passages. 

“Friday were the day I see him last,—pumpf!” said 
Mrs. Thickbroom, who punctuated her sentences with 
‘pumpfs’ or brought them in at the end. “Which dropped 
in naxidental wise as—pumpf! She come five minutes be¬ 
fore him. An’ innercent as the unweaned Babe—pumpf!—I 
could take my Bible oath! putting down that gallipot on 
that identical floor, and saying as how—pumpf!—she’d call 
for it on Monday.” 

Here Stephen coughed,—the deep bass cough of a full- 
grown bearded man. But neither of the women heard, or 
looked round as he hoped they would do, to be impressed 
by the sight of the stranger in the brand-new suit of clothes. 

“Saying as how a currant and— pumpf!—treacle Bake 
she’d planned for their Christmas dinner and little enough 
’twere like to be, I knowed, poor Soul! too well. Her 
Master, as she calls him, spendin’ at the Tap all he can git 
of her earnin’s, an’ Mrs. May at the Dairy Farm, havin — 
pumpf!—stopped her workin’ there-” 

The friend made an indeterminate sound, conveying in¬ 
terest and attention. 


144 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“She says as her Master baint able for to work. Pumpf! 
—we know what his complaint be! Pumpf! Barely has 
she breathed them words about Baked currant-treacle 
Puddin’ when—pumpf!—Mackilliveray busts in at that 
door, as savage as a Market-mad—pumpf! . . . For Bull,” 
said Mrs. Thickbroom forcibly, “is a ’and-reared lamb be¬ 
side him. An’—'Dam that Bell! D’ye keep Bootlaces?’ 
he says, an’ what with my poor dear asthmy, an’ my— 
pumpf!—poor heart flutterin’ like a Bat, an’ the Shop-door 
Bell jiggerin’ itself into fits, I could do no more than stare.” 

'Pumpf!’ would have come in so naturally here that 
Stephen nearly said it. # I 

“Bootlaces we keeps and why deny,” continued Mrs. 
Thickbroom, waving the candle at a solid sheaf of the 
articles she named. “Three pair for Twopence, common 
sort. Leather—pumpf! Threepence, I tells ’im. Which 
in his red eyes then I sees no memory o’ what he’s said. 
There he stands an’ looks at she, an’ she takes no manner 
o’ note o’ him. Pumpf!—no more nor if he’d bin a spider 
on the wall.” 

“To Goodness!” cackled the listener. “Can’t the man 
take No for an answer? ’Tis fur all the world like a fullish 
babe a-crying fur the Moon. Can’t he leave th’ decent 
cretur be and trapse after some of his flash ones? An’ 
what do he do then, Mrs. Thickbroom, ma’am—if so be as 
I may ask?” 

“He props th’ door as she’s—pumpf—passin’ out, an’ 
'Is she goin’ Home?’ he ask, fur if so her way’s his own! 
An’ she answer him, wi’ my own—pumpf!—ears I heern 
her,” said Mrs. Thickbroom. “With my own—pumpf!— 
and ever will I witness to the same!—'Wheer I be going be 
naught to you; as your way is not My way!—nor never 
would if on this earth wer’ but we two alone!’ An’ a mask 
o’ sweat that Mackilliveray were when she goes—pumpf!— 
out an’ leaves him; wipin’ his face wi’ his neckhandkercher 
as his hand it do trimmle like a leaf. An’ Dazed as by 
liquor, though sober enough, he—pumpf!—asts me, 'What 
about that “backer” ?’ Which not being Licensed I tells him 
as much; and he tramps out, bangin’ the door. An’ sendin’ 
the bell into gibberin’ fits, sech as never did I—pumpf!— 






How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 145 

before that moment. If I was never in this life to speak to 
it agen!” 

Here Mrs. Thickbroom’s constitutional troubles asserted 
themselves unanimously, and she pumpfed so long and so 
persistently that the customer prepared to go. 

“So that’s all!” she commented, picking up her pot of 
treacle. “There’s barely the twopenn’orth here, but I must 
be gettin’ home.” 

“Pumpf! As to that, please yourself,” returned the 
chandleress faintly. “Treacle takin’ its own time—pumpf! 
—and neither to be chivied nor coaxed. But if you ask 
whether that’s all—pumpf! I couldn’t tell you!—More than 
this, that Mackilliveray slep’ that night at the New Railway 
Works. An’ Downed Tools early on Christmas Eve, afore 
the Gang had well begun upon the half-day,—an’ went up 
to Finchley—pumpf!—by the Truck an’ Ballast Engine 
plyin’ on the Line. An’—pumpf!—What be more, he ups 
an’ takes her Bye along wi’ him!” 

“Well of all the owdacious imperence! Be you certain 
sure it’s true ?” 

Mrs. Thickbroom confirmed it with a ‘Pumpf!’ as Stephen 
rapped a halfpenny on the counter, and said in deep manly 
accents: 

“A box o’ lights here, please!” 

“We’re closed,” said Mrs. Thickbroom from the back of 
the shop, peering out of the darkness, with her candle-stick 
in one fat hand, and the other flat upon her chest. “For 
the holiday. Pumpf! Can’t ye see the shutters up to 
winder?” 

“Then,” said Stephen more gruffly still, as the customer 
went out with her treacle in her hand, and the little bell 
jingled on her skirts, “can you tell me if a lad named Steve 
Braby be a-living in these parts yet, Missus ?” 

“He be,” was the reply of the chandleress, “an’ he’ve 
more time than I ha’ got for play-games, as I—pumpf! 
There’s your mother’s gallipot standin’—pumpf!—on the 
counter end along of the filled ones, an’ you’d best to take 
it wi’ you, or that puddin’ll never be done! The treacle it 
be paid for,—pumpf! Tell your mother as I said so. An’ 
if she finds a Mowze in it ’tis—pumpf!—nat’ral at the time 


146 The Pipers of the Market Place 

o' year. For Thickbroom an’ me ’ad a Gobbler—pumpf !— 
wi’ biled Gammon for our Christmas dinner; an’ while 
there’s a giblet or a bone left—that cat turns up her nose 
at Mize! An’ this here pound o’ pork-sausages, an’ this here 
bag o’ currants, this quartern o’ flour, also these packets o 
brown sugar an’ best black tea are paid for, said Mrs. 
Thickbroom. “So you take ’em to your mother. And you’ll 
say: ‘From Mrs. Thickbroom With the Comblemens o’ the 
Season, an’ her hopeful, kindly wishes fur a Happy New 
Year!’ Don’t drop the things in the muck, now,—or slam 
the door behind ye. Nor set that drabbited—pumpf!—bell 
a-ringin’ as ye go!” 

As Steve’s faithfully-administered backward kick sent the 
bell into paroxysms of jingling, he realized that the dark¬ 
ness of Mrs. Thickbroom’s shop had nullified the effect of 
his new clothes. 


16 

He slipped into his mother’s little garden noiselessly, be¬ 
cause of the Enemy, and hid his bundle and parcels in the 
shed before he raised the latch of the door. To his joy, 
Malvina was alone, sitting by a tiny fire of hedgerow sticks, 
that burned and crackled cheerfully enough. 

To Stephen in his boyish denseness, there was something 
wounding in the fact that she saw him before his trousers. 
Yet her mother’s kiss, with that fragrance of the fields that 
always clung about her, was so dear a thing that as it pressed 
his mouth, his eyes were wet for joy. When he relaxed his 
happy hug and her arms could let him go again, he stepped 
back to admit of her taking a comprehensive view. 

“Yo’, Steve, wheer did yo’ git them duds?” 

“Guess then!” His blue eyes challenged. 

Together there, with the dancing fire on the walls, and 
floor and ceiling, he could forget the Shadow and be happy 
as before it fell. 

“I’m afeard to guess.” 

Stephen’s Masterpiece afraid. . . . His look showed his 
astonishment. He crinkled the fair skin over his yellow 
brows and narrowed his black-lashed lids at her. Then 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Bose 147 

something came back into his mind. He had got a message 
to give her. He said, frowning to bring back the words: 

‘Til say where when I’ve told ye summat.” 

“What ha’ yo’ to tell?” 

“A message-like as I ha’ got to give ’e. Th’ Man—” 

“What Man?” 

The red mark upon her neck left by Braby’s whip had 
been there a moment previously. Now it began to pale and 
fade away, as streams of angry crimson rose spread over 
her sunburned skin. 

“The Man as stood by the cowyard gate-” began 

Stephen, wrinkling his forehead. 

Malvina said with her great grey eyes, stem now, not 
tender, on his own: 

“Behappen I knows no such a man, ortwould ha’ nought 
to do wi’ him!” 

“Well, he’ve gone away for good, he says. An’ I were 
to mind an’ tell you.” 

“Who said yo’ wer’ to mind?” 

“Hisself. Mackilliveray said so.” 

“Did Mackilliveray gi’ yo’ they new clothes? Answer! 
—’fore I tears ’em off’n yo’!” 

She was, like a lioness, Stephen thought, as she gathered 
her limbs for the spring. 

“Answer!” 

Her eyes were, terrible. Stephen’s lips were white as he 
faltered: 

“He did’n. ’Twas Faggis gin ’em me. Fur a Christmas 
present, like.” 

“Yo’ll tell later how Faggis came to clothe my flesh and 
blood fur charity. What I’ll hear from yo’ now is how 
come my son to foregather wi’ such a man as Mackil¬ 
liveray?” 

Stephen was hardening to sullenness. What had he done 
to anger her? He said glumly, twisting a button on his 
despised new coat: 

“He gi’ me a lift so far as London.” 

“How?” 

“In a truck o’ the ballast-engine that brings the road- 
gangs from Finchley to the New Railway Works. 



148 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Has he who tempts yo’r father to drink, worse than he 
would wi’out him, given any Liquor to yo’r father’s son, or 
tolled yo’ in to any house o’ sin? . . . Look me, your 
mother, in th’ face, an’ answer plain an’ honest, ‘Ay!’ or 
‘No!’ ” 

“No!” 

“Then I thank the Lord! But—” 

Her bosom heaved less stormily, and her stern grey eyes 
;were softer. 

“But that’s not all. Hev’ that bad man axed yo’ Ques¬ 
tions about me as is yo’r mother,—and hev’ yo’ answered— 
as yo’ should not—or bin silent as yo’ should ?” 

Stephen, dyed scarlet to the hair, stammered in pitiable 
confusion: 

“I told—I told him as you’d losted of yer job at the 
Tolley Hall Dairy Farm.” 

“Yo’ did! Say now, do yo’ reckon yo’ deserve to git 
welted fur yo’r blabbing?” 

“I reckons-” 

There was a lump in Stephen’s throat, and his eyes were 
stung with tears. 

“I reckons I does!” 

“An’ so does I!” 

Malvina reached a hazel stick from the corner near the 
fire, ran her thumb down its supple length and poised it in 
her hand. 

“We be ’greed on that. Be nimble now, an’ off wi’ that 
theer jacket. An’ then yo’ll ha’ yo’r supper as I’m keeping 
hot fur yo’. Fur if I mun be yo’r Father, by-times, I’m 
none th’ less yo’r mother.” 

Her voice had its dove-like softness again, and her 
eyes were not a lioness’s now. But the line of her firm 
mouth did not relax and the dimple kept in hiding un¬ 
til Stephen had had his welting,—and a thorough welting, 
too. 

“ ’Tis over. An’ if I’ve spiled th’ stick, I’ve done ye good, 
I reckins. Pull on th’ jacket now, my man, an’ gi’s a grip 
o’ yo’r fist!” The deep dimple showed in her left cheek, 
and her stern mouth smiled seductively. “That is so yo’ be 
willin’,” she said, holding out her faithful hand. . . . 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 149 

“Mother!” . . . With the utterance Stephen leaped upon 
her neck, and she hugged and croodled over him. 

“My lad’s got a cruel woman for a mother. Be that true, 
my Stevey dear ?” 

“It baint!” blubbered Stephen, who was crying now. 
“I says as you’re a Masterpiece!” 

“Then we’ll have our bit o’ supper now,” she said, smooth¬ 
ing his rumpled hair. “ ’Tis nobbut dripping toast, my dear, 
though I’d hoped fur somethin’ better.” 

“Now just you wait ? . . .” 

Stephen darted out and came back with his load of 
presents. And though his mother’s lofty soul winced at the 
thought of charity, the charity that comes as a seasonable 
gift is less galling than the other sort. 

The sausages smelt gloriously, and tasted even better when 
Malvina finally sat down to supper with her boy. The 
oranges and plum-pudding graced the board, and it was 
so like one of the happy nights before the Shadow crossed 
the threshold that Stephen forgot the Enemy, and all con¬ 
cerning him. 

But when Malvina rose and set away three sausages in, 
the cupboard, and made fresh tea, and poured it off the 
leaves, and set it in a jug upon the hob, the laughter died 
in Stephen’s eyes, and his mouth, which curled up at the 
corners, straightened into a sullen line. There was no for¬ 
getting any more. 

“Yo’r Father woan’t be home till late,” said his mother, 
adding hot water to the teapot, and setting a sugared slice 
of Mrs. Faggis’s cold plum-pudding before Stephen on his 
favourite willow plate. “He’ve gone to Wheelwright Rum- 
bold’s, an’ as like as not will sup there.” 

“O,” said Stephen, and the band of hate, or dread, or 
both of them together, that had tightened suffocatingly 
about his heart, loosened, and he could breathe again. 

There was a pleasant little interlude when he made Mal¬ 
vina share his pudding. It was sent to her by Mrs. Faggis, 
he explained, who sought her opinion thereupon. Malvina 
said ’twas over rich for her own taste, yet a forthright 
pudding: and knowing this for the highest praise, Stephen 
was well-content. 


150 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Yet his glance reverted to the jug on the hob, and the old 
double-barrelled shot-gun in the corner, the burned clay 
pipes and the reeking briar that disfigured the tidy chimney- 
shelf. The ragged straw hat that hung behind the door, and 
Braby’s battered hunting-crop, topping the thumbed pile of 
sporting newspapers that lay on the chest of drawers. 

Not only to Stephen’s fancy, the place reeked of Braby, 
despite Malvina’s scrupulous and Levitical cleanliness. 
Socks and shirts and underwear of his, neatly darned and 
newly washed, hung upon her drying-horse before the 
meagre fire. Absorbing all the warmth of it just as greedily 
and unscrupulously as their owner would have, Stephen 
knew, had he been present in the flesh. Perhaps Malvina 
read in her son’s face the nature of the thought that clouded 
it. She said to him in the mellow voice that was always 
music in his ears: 

“I ha’ a bit o’ news fur yo\ Yo’r Father ha’ jined th’ 
Ringers.” 

“O,” said Stephen, as the long arm that had welted him 
so soundly with the hazel-stick, came across the table, and 
took his cup, and filled it again with tea. 

“Finish yo’r supper, Stevey, lad!” She touched his cheek 
with a finger-tip and smiled in his chop-fallen countenance: 
“ ’Tis the hopefullest bit o’ news as I ha’ heerd fur long. 
For when I married my Master he were one o’ the New 
Ringers, an’ took to it so na*’ral as he called the Bob for 
em. 

“Just so as Mr. Rumbold he calls the Bob fur th’ Old 
Ringers?” asked Stephen. 

“Just so as. An’ what were th’ New Ringers then—bein’ 
grown—wi’ the Passing of nigh sixteen years,” said Mal¬ 
vina—“to the Old Ringers;—Wheelwright Rumbold he 
have asked of yo’r Father to rejine. An’ yo’r Father he 
were wonderful pleased at it. An’ ’twas kind o’ Wheel¬ 
wright Rumbold. Though yo’r Father mid ha’ claimed his 
place, never havin’ gi’n it up; 'Once a Ringer, alius a Ringer,’ 
he says to Wheelwright Rumbold; 'An’ yo’ll find me come 
to practise the Changes for the New Year. An’ whosum- 
dever jumbles the strikin’, or spikes,—it won’t be Me,’ he 
says! What be yo’ a-lookin’ at?” 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 151 

Stephen’s eyes were staring. . . . She could talk like that 
while the hunting-crop lay there on the chest of drawers! 
... He mumbled: 

“Nought to matter. On’y I were wunnerin’—whether 
he’ll jine the Walkers on Walkin’ Night this year?” 

Swift horror leaped into her eyes. But she fought it 
down and mastered it, and Stephen having finished now, 
she began to clear away. She said, after a troubled interval, 
putting the used crockery on the sink-board: 

“That he’d Walk with the Ringers on Twelfth Night— 
I’ll own it had slipped my mind-like. But it be only once 
to-year.” Her bosom rose upon a sigh. 

“At weddin’s and feasts an’ funerals, an’ times when the 
Flag’s on the Tower—th’ Ringers gits a fair drop give ’em,’’ 
said Stephen, pursuing the theme. “As fur their Walkin’ 
on Twelfth Night, a-gatherin’ fur the Ringer’s Supper, as 
Mrs. Popplewell gits ready fur nine o’clock in th’ long room 
back o’ th’ tap—though twenty on ’em starts at five to th’ 
stroke, you knows how many sets down to it!” 

“Yo’ve larned a new way wi’ yo’r tongue, my son,” said 
Malvina, “since yo’ve bin away!”. And she looked at her 
boy as a woman will, who has carried him under her bosom, 
and fed him with her milk, and seen him thrive and flourish 
as a young oak sapling. And who has believed that his 
inmost mind is known to her as his body, until the moment 
when she learns that she knows him not at all. 

And she endured a foretaste now of the anguish laid up 
for the mother, whose love has not developed with the 
growth of the son she has reared. One day he looks upon 
her, and his eyes are a child’s no longer; and the flowers 
of her heart (or so she believes)—are weeds to him, ever- 
more. 

She was bewildered, even appalled, by this sudden, bur¬ 
geoning of manhood in this shoot of her stem, this twig of 
her branch, this being sprung from her. Her mental eye 
took a backward glance and she saw him in the old red 
flannel frock, loping on the fringes of the whooping crowd 
that attended the Ringers’ Walk. 

In the certainty that the weaker-headed among those who 
took part in the Walking would have to be assisted upon 


152 The Pipers of the Market Place 

their homeward way. For that solemn annual perambula¬ 
tion made in company with a money-box, hallowed by the 
mists of antiquity as it was, yet involved an amount of 
liquoring that neighboured on debauch. 

How had she failed to guess the cause of Braby’s willing¬ 
ness to join the Ringers, when their son could grasp his 
motive with such pitiless accuracy? . . . Was it because 
they were alike ? The muscles of her throat were straitened, 
and she who scorned the women who cried as ‘wimmickers’ 
and ‘grizzlers’ would have been glad to find relief in a gush 
of easy tears. 

“I’ve walked wi’ th’ Ringers since I was eight, and each 
year sin’ then,” asserted Stephen, “ ’cept the year as I got 
the Mumps, an’ wer too bad to go. An’ though they’ll be 
as sober as judges when they starts—or teetotallers—or 
Baptist Ministers—I’m willin’ to lay a thrup’ny bit—they’ll 
be tiddled when they gits back home!” 

“Yo’d not dare to say a bold-faced thing like that o’ 
Wheelwright Rumbold, of Glazier Bendall!” protested 
Malvina. 

“I’ve heerd Rumbold wi’ his own lips telling Bendall o’ 
last Year’s Walking, as he’d got as much on board says he— 
as he could carry straight! An’ he says: ‘ ’Tis talk in these 
here parts as my head be made o’ cast iron. Take an’ pump 
on it, Charley-wag, an’ ye’ll likely hear it fizz!’ That wer’ 
last year to’rds th’ end o’ th’ Walk, which we starts as alius 
from th’ Rectory—Rector givin’ Five Shillin’ fur th’ Box 
an’ nothin’ to drink at all. ‘Fur you’ll ha’ had enough by 
time you’re done,’ he says, ‘if my expectations be justified!’ 
An’ the Walkers gives him the usual Cheer and starts on 
the Parish Round. Cap’n Prothero at Waterloo Lodge,” 
went on Stephen, who was now beginning to enjoy himself 
—“Cap’n Prothero comes next to the Rectory,—the Walk 
alius beginnin’ at the South end o’ the Green. Three an’ 
six fur the slitty Box, wi’ Cap’n an’ Mrs. Prothero’s best 
wishes, an’ hopin’ the Annual Supper will Prove as ’joyable 
as the last ’un, and will the Walkers step in the Kitchen an’ 
take a glass o’ Ale? An’, they gits the Ale an’ gives the 
Cap’n a cheer, an’ another fur Mrs. Prothero and the Family 
—an’ off we goes to th’ ‘Lilacs’—where old Miss Tidsley 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Bose 153 

’bides. An’ Miss Tidsley she sends ’em out by the gal ’as 
work there by the day, a Shilling an’ a tray o’ glasses o’ 
home-made Cowslip Wine. Then it’s the turn o’ Britannia 
House and Mr. Pushley and the Army Pupils,—they comes 
out on the Steps in black tail-coats, an’ white chokers an’ 
shirts, O my! An’ Pushley don’t fork out—but there’s a 
Whip-round among the Army Pupils; an’ Eighteen bob 
clinks in the Box, wi’ Pushley lookin’ on.” 

“I’d gi’ th’ man his Mister, if I wer’ yo’, I reckins!” said 
Malvina, looking soberly at the excited boy. 

“Then Mister Pushley he calls out to the maid ‘Glasses 
here, an’ a bottle o’ Sherry!’ Two bottles it takes fur a 
glass all round, an’ they cheers him—an’ the Pupils too! 
An’ Wheelwright Rumbold he makes a Speech, an’ a proper, 
if ever I heard ’un! . . . Then they calls at Miss Quin¬ 
tain’s Young Ladies’ School, an’ Miss Quintain she sends 
out Tenpence by the Buttons—an’ a Message to say that as 
cheering brings on Mrs. Quintain’s neuralgy, will the Ring¬ 
ers be so kind as to do it when they gits to the corner o’ th’ 
Road? An’ the Young Ladies they smuggles out Three 
Shillings in pennies an’ fourpences, an’ a dozen o’ Stone 
Ginger, and please will you be so kind as send the Bottles 
back! Then,” said Stephen, getting warmer as he got 
farther into the recital; “they goes to Commander Nagley 
at Nelson Lodge where th’ Flagstaff is—an’ what does they 
git from Nagley,—with ’is jolly old fat red face? A gold 
guinea an’ a glass o’ hot Rum-Punch, with Lemon in it, fur 
every man! an’ after the Punch they give him three times 
three, an’ a little ’un, fur a Tiger, an’ sings ‘He’s a Jolly 
Good Fellow!’ on the lawn in front o’ th’ Lodge. Half-a- 
crown they gits, an’ home-brewed Beer at Mrs. William 
Tibbitt’s, an’ Elderberry Cordial at old Mrs. Dewey’s an’ 
a crooked King William sixpence wi’ a hole punched in the 
rim. An’ there’s more beer at th’ ‘Spotted Dog’ an’ seven 
an’ six for the Gatherin’ Box,—an’ by this time they’re 
walkin’ straggly, an’ some on ’em wants to Lay Down. 
So the next place on the Walkin’ List bein’ the Baptist 
Minister’s,—they sends a steady hand to knock, an’ puts the 
soberest in front. An’ Mrs. Tedding, she sends ’em out a 
can o’ tea as was regular red-hot bilin’, an’ says as they’d 


154 The Pipers of the Market Place 

best drink each a cup an’ git back home to their wives!” 

“And well fur them if they’d have had nought else but 
tea inside ’em,” said Malvina, “from th’ time they’d start, 
till all got home. Eh, deary me! Th’ men!” 

“Eightpence the Minister give for the box, an’ the tea 
wer’ that strong it steadies ’em, an’ they’re walkin’ so it’s 
pretty to see—time they gits to Tolley Hall. An’ th’ big 
Hall doors are throwed open wide, as Squire’s givin’ his 
Twelfth Night Party, an’ don’t the Young Ladies look 
beautiful!” cried Stephen, radiant now. “Wi’ sparklin’ 
stones on their neckses, an’ armses an’ shoulders an’ curls, 
an’ wreaths o’ flowers in their hair, an’ Bokays in their 
hands. An’ the Gentlemen they be curled up too, an’ shiny 
as Grease can make ’em. An’ all on ’em in Tail Coats, an’ 
starched white chokers, an’ weskits—Buttonhole Bokays an’ 
studs an’ chains, an’ White Gloves on ’em too! An’ the 
Squire whacks Five Pound fur the Gatherin’ Box an’ Hot 
Brandy-an’-Water fur the Ringers, bein’ so uncommon 
Foggy an’ cold, he says, which will Warm ’em to a glow! 
An’ some on ’em gets so uncommon warm that they starts 
in a-Fighting—” 

“Don’t tell no more!” Malvina begged. How could he 
torture her! 

“An’ Rumbold Parts ’em tellin’ ’em to Behave like men 
an’ not babbies—an’ Butcher Haybitt, as started th’ Row, he 
begins a-cryin’ an’ blubberin’, an’ says he, he’s knowed no 
’appy hour since his poor mother died! An’ Pudsey be so 
bad as him,—never havin’ seed his Mother. An’ Thick- 
broom his stummick turns upsy-down, an’ terrible bad he 
be. Along o’ th’ Elder Wine he says—as never did agree 
wi’ him. An’ all way down the Chestnut Drive the Walkers 
be a-tumblin’ on their noses—all but Rumbold, an’ Bendall 
an’ two or three more, bein’ as Tiddled as ever I see! An’ 
I’ve walked wi’ th’ Ringers fower year. But this year I 
woan’t go Walkin’. There’s none o’ funniment now fur 
me in seein’ men make beastses o’ theirselves. Nor I’m 
none proud, as I can mind”—he met her stern eyes hardily— 
“in havin’ a beast fur my Father, an’ that’s th’ truth to 
God!” 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 155 

She drew herself to her noble height, and said in that 
voice that filled the room, and echoed from its walls and 
rafters: 

“I dunno what th’ Lord’s dumb brutes, as laps from pools 
an’ puddles, ha’ done—the decent, cleanly things! to be 
evened wi’ drunken men. Yo’ ha’ spoke your mind, my 
sonny, an’ now yo’ll hear yo’r mother’s. Him yo’ call Beast 
be yo’r Father. An’ yo’ will Honour him!” 

Stephen, awed by the sternness of her look, thought of 
the Angel of the Judgment. . . . She went on: 

“Honour him as yo’ be bidden in th’ Book, nobbut he do 
hisself Dishonour. . . . Yo’r changed sin’ yo’ went to 
London. I wonnot ask yo’ why. Yo’r a man, as was a 
laddy on th’ night yo’ went out from me. . . . Med-be ’tis 
in yo’r Father’s blood to ripen over-soon. But take it fro’ 
me, yo’ as ha’ felt th’ pith o’ my arm this evening, as from 
this hour I will use the stick to yo’ no more!” 

He cried out some passionate, incoherent words to the 
effect that she was welcome to beat him. That he knew no 
act of hers was meant for other than his good. That no boy 
had ever had, or would have, a kinder, dearer mother! and 
the passionate words seemed to flow by her like wafted 
thistledown. 

“Never no more! Onless it came to angry words betwixt 
yo’, being follered up by Blows, as more than like to be. 
An’ then,” the long-vanished humorous quirks showed at 
the corners of her deep-cut lips, and the corners of her eyes 
were crinkled, “if I took an’ Hammered him that night for 
strikin’ of thee silly—think how I’d fare to Hammer yo’, fur 
liftin’ yo’r hand to he! . . 

There was a white-hot spark in her son’s blue eyes that 
did not escape her notice. Ay, they were Brabys both of 
them and savage as stoats! thought she. 

“It be hard for yo’,” she began again, “an’ mappen, ’twill 
be harder. Often an’ often latelins, I ha’ thowt o’ sendin’ 
yo’ away.” 

“Where ?” It was less a question than a cry. 

“To some place of Employment,” she told him, “wheer 
yo’ might work fur a wage, an’ bide wi’ some decent soul. 


156 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Or wheer yo’ might gi’ yo’r work in pay fur housing an’ 
victuals, an’ clothing, me havin’ no brass to ’prentice yo’ to a 
Master, as yo’ know.” 

He had never loved her so dearly. And she could talk 
so calmly of their parting! He cried out to her. 

“Mother, suppose in a year or two—me bein’ stronger and 
taller, I got the offer of a Market Job up to London wi’ a 
gentleman-” 

“Who be the man?” 

“Buckley the Grower—You’d come wi’ me, wouldn’ ye, 
mother? You’d none stop here to bear wi’—what ye have 
to bear wi’ now! You’d come along wi’ me, wouldn’ ye, 
fur I’d never go wi’out you!” 

“If a place be offert yo’ll take it, lad. My place be here 
wi’ him!” 

“Is he more to ye than I be?” Stephen cried to her re¬ 
proachfully. She answered him, and now there were tears 
shining in her great grey eyes: 

“I took my oath when us wer’ wed, as nought but Death 
should part us; an’ not a bein’ on this earth I had to love but 
he. He’ve changed! I ha’ but little hope, as he’ll alter fur 
the better. But this I know. He might be worse;—an’ 
would be, but fur me. Ther’s his hand on th’ garden-gate!” 

Stephen snatched a hasty kiss from her, and darted up the 
ladder, as the scraping of boots on the besom by the door 
gave sign of the coming of the Enemy. 

There was a little south-looking window in a gable-end 
of the attic, over Stephen’s little pallet-bed. He opened it on 
its rusty hinge and thrust his hot young head out. The full 
Moon did not show herself, but the stars were wonderfully 
bright. . . . 

It was a windless night of bitter cold. The sparkling frost 
had vanished; and haystacks, trees and houses were mere 
adumbrated shapes upon the Dark. And London—not the 
mystery it had been, but a marvel sensed and wondered at— 
lay smouldering beyond the blotty clumps of woods on the 
horizon-line. 

Those cold bright eyes of the stars! So long they had 
looked down on human troubles. So long, so long they 
would continue to look, until Stephen’s were all done. . . . 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 157 

But maybe there was Somebody who sat beyond their 
radiant indifference, Who would understand that Stephen 
was sorry he had broken his promise to Lou. . . . 

Peace and Goodwill. Could they ever reign under a roof 
that covered Braby ? . . . Hot tears of rage and shame and 
revolt crowded into his son’s eyes. Stephen had cried be¬ 
fore, that night, but those tears had been sweet ones. And 
these were fierce and bitter tears that burned like vitriol. 

He went to his poor bed, and sobbed himself to sleep 
under the thin old coverings. And his Masterpiece, creeping 
up to look at him an hour or so later, with her pot of goose- 
grease for the soothing of his stripes, and her rags of soft 
old linen, saw his sleep-flushed cheeks still streaked with 
wet, and sobbed a little, too. 

Again—and conceive the self-reproach of her loyalty 
against such question—she wondered whether Stephen was 
not more his father’s son than her own! And she felt as 
though the drop too much in her brimming cup of bitterness, 
would be—that Braby should have stamped himself in char¬ 
acter and disposition—if not in form and feature, on this 
child of his and hers. 


17 

Affairs at the Tolley Hall Dairy Farm prospering ill 
without the faithful service of Malvina, the post of under- 
dairywoman was offered her again, and shutting her firm 
lips upon some things she might have said, she quietly re¬ 
turned to her place. And Stephen’s new clothes were laid 
away in a drawer for Sundays and holidays and high-days. 
And Stephen went back to his field-work again, with some 
memories to liven toil. The old companionship between 
mother and son seemed a thing forever vanished, though 
sometimes, when Braby was away from home, it would 
waken, and revive. And then Malvina would invite the boy 
to a lesson in scientific Hammering, and eye to eye and toe 
to toe they would stand up for a sparring-bout. Or Stephen 
would read her a chapter from Bunyan or the Bible, as 
they sat together beside the hearth that Braby would chill so 
soon. 

The wastrel had bestirred himself to no useful end, since 


158 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

his return from London, though Malvina had looked for¬ 
ward to a day when he would turn his hand to work. 

Her hope had died out. ... For a moment it had re¬ 
vived when he sent Stephen on an errand to the blacksmith, 
and taking off his coat and vest and rolling up his shirt¬ 
sleeves, asked for oil, emery paper, a feather, and some rags. 
These being provided—and Stephen returning with a file 
lent by the blacksmith, the old sporting gun was taken from 
the corner and cleaned and furbished, and the length of its 
barrel shortened by filing off two-thirds. 

Hollowing out the stock-end in a cunning way, and 
smoothing the file-work on the barrel, had afforded Braby 
two days of work beside the living-room fire, when there 
came a scraping of boots by the step, and a knock at the 
frontward door. 

Braby hid his work behind his chair, and signed to Mal¬ 
vina to open. 

“Might a neighbour ask you, Missus, if your Master be 
to home? ,, 

It was Haybitt, the by-way-of-being-butcher. A sham¬ 
bling, awkward, dusty man, with hair like weathered straw- 
thatch overhanging round staring eyes that were curiously 
dim and blank. A rumpled condition of plumage, in com¬ 
bination with a sleepy daylight air, distinguished him in 
common with the barn-owl, and other predatory birds who 
are active while the world is asleep. 

Malvina looked upon the man with unconcealed distaste 
and repulsion, nor did Haybitt regard Mrs. Braby in a par¬ 
ticularly agreeable way. Such humble custom as she could 
bestow had never been given to this huckster, whose re¬ 
luctance to display fresh meat for sale while a fragment of 
the last beast killed remained upon his hands, was a by¬ 
word among the more scrupulous of the matrons of Tol- 
leymead. She sickened at the vision of his reeking little 
shop, as he ducked his frowsy head upon her doorstep. And 
his blindish eyes, seeming not to see beyond a radius of a 
foot or so, sharply took in the traces of Braby’s recent work. 

“Come in, come in!” cried Braby with what for him was 
heartiness. “My wife’s bound outward on some woman’s 
errand—we’ll have the place to ourselves.” 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 159 

As was his way, a studied way, contemptuous, coarse and 
slighting, he had given his wife no previous hint of an ap¬ 
pointment made with this man. But Malvina plucked her 
bonnet from its peg, and passing the intruder on her thresh¬ 
old, quietly went out, as he went in, and shut the cottage 
door. 

Presently her stately figure with its noble, serious profile 
and cataract of tawny curls flowing from under the rough 
straw bonnet, was seen moving across the background of 
January skies and sere brown woodlands, framed in the 
square of the front window of the cottage living-room. 
When the lofty head and the tall form were shadowed on 
the blind of the side-window that overlooked the garden- 
patch (the sun being south-west), the visitor jerked his 
crooked thumb coarsely in its direction and remarked: 

“Your Missus likes me no better than she did, it seems to 
me, old pardner!" 

“Women are stubborn fools, we know/’ said Braby with 
a shrug. 

“Where's the woman gone?" Haybitt asked. 

And Braby answered indifferently: 

“To the wheatacres, I should suppose, to meet her 
precious cub." 

There was no glitter in the butcher's dull eyes. But a 
thought stirred under his thatching. 

“Growin' a big lad, th’ boy is, too. Time ye made him 
arn his keep!" 

“He does that now," Braby returned, “which is rather 
more than his father does." 

“If you’d yer rights you'd be drivin’ by wi’ a spankin' 
pair in a carriage," said the by-way-of-butcher, “an’ sendin' 
fur me to Brabycott, to bid fur yer sickly cows." 

“Instead of paying so much the pound for carrion you’ve 
bought of others," snarled Braby, showing his teeth in the 
beard that was clean and well trimmed now. But he 
brought out his bottle and gave the butcher a stiff dram, 
and poured himself a caulker, and they sat and talked as 
the sun went down, and were as thick as thieves. 

With an aged father in the Union, and a sickly wan- 


160 The Pipers of the Market Place 

eyed wife at home, and a family of noisy, tow-haired chil¬ 
dren, the by-way-of-butcher was regarded by a majority of 
the better-class residents of Tolleymead as a well-meaning, 
honest and rather helpless man, who strove hard to feed 
his family and keep the wolf from the door. 

Yet a knowing minority were perfectly aware that the 
helpless -man was master, to a remarkable degree, of the 
art of helping himself. Not that this art was quite un¬ 
known among the inhabitants of Tolleymead. It is not 
claimed that the standard of morality was loftier in Tolley¬ 
mead than in other villages; or that its inhabitants respected 
the laws of property more than they were respected else¬ 
where. 

Far from it. The green gooseberries Miss Tidsley meant 
to pick for the first gooseberry-tart of the season, would melt 
off the laden bushes with the dewdrops of dawn in May. 
The dish of early strawberries would be gathered and gone, 
ere the goloshes of Mrs. William Tibbitts traversed the 
layers of damp yellow straw laid between the rows of vines, 
—the apples blown down overnight in the orchard of Cap¬ 
tain Prothero would be gone ere that warrior laid his 
hand upon the dew-wet latch of the gate. 

The Brahma hen that had hatched out a brood in the 
hayloft of Commander Nagley would be spared the toil 
of teaching her chicks to hop down the ladder leading to 
the stableyard. The finest peas, cauliflowers, and cabbages 
that were grown ‘down to ’lotments’ would vanish out of 
the ground mysteriously, and their plots would know them 
no more. The edges would be neatly shaved off the 
farmer’s outlying dung-heaps, and coal-houses and wood¬ 
sheds and bush-piles would be bled under cover of the 
dark. 

But those owl-eyes, shaded by the frowsy thatch peculiar 
to Haybitt, could see better by the darkest night than the 
eyes of other folks by day. The lumbering feet in the 
iron-toed boots could run swiftly as a lurcher’s, or move 
delicately and noiselessly as a weasel’s or a cat’s. A sack, 
a spade, a billhook, a clasp-knife, a bit of yellow soap and 
a bunch of odd-shaped keys (for negotiating the padlocks 
of fruit-houses, coal-sheds, fowl-houses and dairies), in the 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 161 

hands of the by-way-of-butcher were the tools of an adept. 
An artist of the most consummate, whose three young sons, 
to his secret pride, were developing the paternal talents, and 
promising to follow speedily in their worthy father’s way. 

With the approach of middle-age Haybitt had taken up 
the Butchering, retailing the carcasses of such feeble beasts 
as might be got hold of cheap. He did a bit in Knackery, 
too, and slanderous people hinted that the choicer equine 
morsels did not all go to the Kennels, but were bought by 
the Workhouse Guardians, that Paupers might be fed! . . . 
And of late years he had driven a flourishing but furtive 
trade in garden-stuff and orchard produce, not to mention 
the furred and feathered fruit of local coverts and pre¬ 
serves. Paying those who came to him with things like 
these for disposal, in hard money, or bottles of gin, of 
whisky, or of rum. 

Thus the bloodstained yard behind the reeking shop held 
secrets only known to those who had helped to hide them, 
and their frowsy proprietor was a Power in his way. And 
not a good one either, as the wives of men, whom need or 
choice brought under his sordid influence, knew to their 
bitterness, poor souls! but were afraid to say. 

For things happened to those persons, high or low, who 
were owed a grudge by Haybitt. When you have so many 
obedient slaves, whom fear, or liquor, or money render 
supple, pliant instruments of your envy or hate—grudges 
are easily worked off. In infinitesimally petty ways, which 
perhaps are the most effective—as the proverb about the 
dropping of water hints—in wearing out flesh or stone. 


18 

The sixty-acre wheatfield, bounded on the west by the 
Tolley Brook Road, was bisected by a rutted cart-track, 
lumbering rather than running side-by-side with a narrow 
right-of-way. A gate in the hedge admitted to these, and 
the cottage occupied by the Brabys, which stood some little 
distance back in its little garden-patch. The Great North 
Road was practically the eastward boundary of the wheat- 
acres, though a wired-in belt of covert and preserve lay 


162 The Pipers of the Market Place 

between them and the Road. And in the topmost corner 
of the nor’east end of the wheatacres, cut off from Braby- 
cott property by Upper Tolley mead Lane, and sheltered 
from the northerly winds by a spinney of larch and pine 
and fir, and a shrubbery of box and laurel—showed the 
plain white house and outbuildings of Tolley Hall Dairy 
Farm. 

Presently, when the New Branch Railway Works should 
extend towards High Marnet, the line would cut through 
the wheatacres, and peace and quiet would be gone. Mal¬ 
vina viewed the prospect with disrelish, like the husband 
of her mistress at the Dairy. But the Lord of the Manor 
and the Railway Company had struck a bargain between 
them, and when two parties out of three say Yes, what 
use is the third man’s No? 

‘‘Best take your Compensation/’ said the farmer, rather 
grimly, “and put up as pleasant as you can with what 
you’d stop if you could.” 

Homespun wisdom, which had served to help Malvina 
at some cruel junctures. But useless at the crisis she saw 
approaching now. Stephen’s love for her did much to 
reconcile her with her trials and hardships. But if she 
were destined to see her humble lessons of honesty un¬ 
learned,—she could find it in her heart to wish that the 
roof and walls of the cottage might tumble in, some stormy 
night—and kill the three of them in their sleep. . . . 

Though she loved with every fibre of her heart the 
little house and garden, and the wheatlands that spread 
round them, at all seasons of the year. When the snow 
lay thick on the brown ploughlands that the hungry plover 
wheeled over—when the blue-green bloom of the springing 
corn showed in the sheltered hollows—when the ripe red 
wheat or the silver-grey oats rustled along the furrows and 
darkened or lightened with the passing of the faint hot 
harvest breeze. When the twitch-fires burned, and the har¬ 
row jerked at the heels of the strong brown horses, tramp¬ 
ling over the clods turned up by the bright curved share of 
the plough—when the blanketing fogs lay thick on the 
ground, and the field-path was a quagmire, her faithful pas¬ 
sion knew no change. . . . Looking on it, she loved it now. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 163 

For here she had been brought as a bride, after Braby’s 
brief hot wooing. Seventeen; think of it!—she sighed to 
herself, the sad woman of thirty-four. . . . Here she had 
been loved, and had loved again, with all the fervour of 
her nature; and here she had borne three babies—and two 
of them had died. 

They were ‘wonnerful weaklin’s’ to be born of her who 
was so strong and hearty. So pure of blood, so full of 
health and rich vitality. Only Stephen ‘framed’ to make a 
stand for life,—whereas the others had slipped out of it, 

• as easily as hour-old lambs, yeaned on a night of snow. 

Stephen had arrived one drenching night at the end of 
a wet October. Her Master gone—Malvina had faced her 
hour without a neighbour near. . . . Drifting passively to 
Death, her infant’s cry aroused her from her stupor of 
exhaustion. Its feeble hands had dragged her back from 
the brink of the Great Beyond. 

It was fair-skinned, when it ceased to be red, and blue¬ 
eyed, like Malvina’s mother, and had hair as yellow as 
Malvina’s own, when it left off being mere down. 

And it cried. . . . What an agony of solicitude she had 
known in the rearing of the weakling! The Nazarite locks 
untouched by the shears, like the garment of coarse ned 
flannel, and the unsheathed limbs had been the visible signs 
of a system of wholesale hardening, that rude as it was, 
had Common Sense for its basis, and saved the child. 

“For there’s a kind o’ pindling blight on the chavo / as I 
reckon,” said a Gipsy pedlar who sometimes called at.the 
cottage with her basket of wares. A bronzed and vivid 
creature with tangled locks of night-black hair, straying 
from under a red-and-yellow handkerchief, whose step was 
as free, and whose figure was as tall and active as Mal¬ 
vina’s, though she carried thrice the burden of Mrs. Braby’s 

years. . T . . , 

“Ay, there’s a curse on the chavo, like. I minds when 
I were a young woman—nor not so young, but Ida darter 
o’ my own, as was married and suckling o twins! there 
was trouble at a Gorgio’s mansion along of the lady s 
babby, and she an’ her nursemaid come on the sly to our 

1 Chavo, child. 


164 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

tents to ask knowledge o’ we. ... For living under the 
sky as we does, and smelling of the fresh wind forever, our 
little ones be tough and strong as the little wild moorland 
grys . 1 Whereas the Gorgio babbies be weak an’ alius pind- 
lin’ an’ pinin’. And when the mother o’ this here one came 
begging me question my granny—I hadn’t the heart to deny 
her, and there’s how it come about! Says my granny, sit¬ 
ting bolt-up on end under her quilt of red satin; trimmed 
wi’ real lace as she’d larned how to make in a country over 
the sea; ‘Nor never will thrive in this ’varsal world,’ says 
she, ‘onless you lets in the air to him; an’ keeps the shears 
from off of his head—and dresses him as a gal!’ ” 

“An’ did they?” asked Malvina anxiously. 

“They did them there things, missus, though the father 
o’ the babby was agin ’em. But so much respect had his 
lady for the Romani chi 2 an’ her words (for my granny 
she were terrible wise)—that she dressed her sickly little 
chavo from that day on till his ’leventh year in raklis rivi- 
pen. s An’ he growed a terrible broadly man, an’ terrible 
strong for a Gorgio; and has children an’ grandchildren a- 
many, so you mind what I say!” 

“I’ll mind it,” promised Malvina, rocking her fretful 
baby. 

“And here’s another thing to mind. For lapping of the 
young ’uns, or happing of the old ’uns, there’s nought to 
beat Welsh flannel, whether it’s the red or the grey. 
Straight off the back of the sheep it comes, missus, wi’ 
the nat’ral ile in it—an’ for keeping out wet, an’ keeping 
in warmth, there’s nought like the wool of the sheep!” 

And the Gipsy pedlar went away, the richer for six¬ 
pence of Malvina’s, and Malvina broke into the rent-money 
and bought the stuff prescribed. And now you know the 
reason of the curls that knew no touch of the clippers, and 
the queer red flannel body-frocks Stephen wore till his 
twelfth year. 

Many would-be lovers, single and wed, had been drawn 
by his mother’s beauty to haunt her ways or follow her 

1 Gry, pony. 

2 Romani chi, Gipsy woman. 

3 Raklis rivipen, girl’s dress. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 165 

from afar with greedy, covetous eyes. So Malvina’s feet 
had been beset with snares, and that they had escaped them, 
was due to her innate chastity, and her passionate love of 
her child. 

Attentions of a rough, unmistakable kind had constantly 
been thrust on her. Offers, secret and open, had been made 
to her and she had passed them by. Favoured by her iso¬ 
lated mode of life, assaults of the more brutal kind had 
been made upon her robust virtue. Her splendid physical 
strength had prevailed for the shaming of rustic satyrs even 
as her shrewd North-country tongue had daunted lovers of 
less brutal kind. She had never known fear of one of 
these, or sensed the possibility of mastery in any, until her 
path was crossed by the man Mackilliveray. 

A powerful, rough and silent man, almost handsome in 
his bovine fashion. His talk, thickened with the Newport 
burr, and somewhat akin to the dialect of her own Leckley 
district, had come to her ears like the burden of some half- 
forgotten song. 

Very soon after that night at ‘The Pure Drop,’ when 
Braby,—tramping homeward to the wheatacres, to break 
by his unannounced return, the silence of eleven years!— 
had crossed the familiar stepping-stones that led to the 
village tavern, the womanly intuition of Malvina had shown 
her the danger in her way. A reckless and a desperate man 
when roused, was her judgment on the navigator—capable 
of unscrupulous action, and violence to enforce his will. 
His early approaches she had rebuffed with a directness 
that baffled his coarseness; a dignity that wakened in his 
breast some faint stirrings of respect. 

The check was temporary. The sluggish brain working 
behind those red-veined eyes that followed her was capable 
of subtlety in the pursuit of its owner’s desires. Finding 
no easy conquest here, Mackilliveray altered his tactics. 
His court was now to Braby, whom he met at the tap o’ 
nights. 

The plan forming behind the light pale eyes and under 
the scarlet hair-thatch, was neither especially clever nor 
particularly new. He plied Braby freely with liquor, lost 
small silver to him over cards and wagers, listened wil- 


166 The Pipers of the Market Place 

lingly to his bragging talk, and grinned at his fouler jokes. 

As their boon-companionship increased, Braby brought 
him to the cottage. His wife was glad of an errand that 
excused her absence then. Next time he came she would 
have gone out—but a snarl from Braby checked her. What 
did she want to be gadding for ? Let her stop under her 
husband’s roof. 

“Eh, the men!” thought Malvina as she took her besom 
from its place beside the shallow doorstep, beat the birch- 
twigs clean against the garden-fence, and began to sweep 
out the shed. 

“Missus!” A heavy voice had spoken, and a big form 
blocked the doorway. “I’d ’counted none on drivin’ on 
ye outen yer oan home. Your man he’ve med me welcome 
enough, but the man’s welcome’s a poor one, when the 
gradely lass he’s married on is dour wi’ ye an’ mum.” 

“I be no lass,” she said with scorn. “Look for ’em 
wheer yo’ll find ’em.” 

“I cannowt see no woman’s face,” said Mackilliveray, 
“sin’ I looked on yourn! An’ Burn my eyes if I wants 
to! Now I ha’ spoke my mind out. Good arternoon to 
ye, Missus.” 

With this rough salutation he was gone. 

“Men!” said Malvina, besoming till the dust and leaves 
and rubbish rolled out of the door of the wood-shed in an 
almost solid cloud. But she went to the darker end of the 
shed to redd up the dwindling woodpile, and laid her face 
in her two hands, and cried in the shadows there. 

Then she dried the eyes that had shed hot tears for pity 
of Malvina Braby. 

She felt some pity mingled with scorn for the man who 
had gone away. “Th’ brassy chap! Makin’ up sheep’s eyes 
at a wisht owd married woman. . . . Eh—the man!” she 
said with contempt of the madness of Mackilliveray, oddly 
mingled with contempt of the faded wife—herself. 

For the heyday of her beauty was over. Her glorious 
hair was less glossy, the curves of her throat and bosom 
and hips were less sumptuous than they had been. There 
were even faint lines about her eyes and mouth, and the 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 167 

texture of her skin was coarser, that had had the rosy- 
amber glow and smoothness of a nectarine. 

The wasps had got at the nectarine and ravaged its juicy 
ripeness. Troubles had thronged upon troubles, fretting 
both body and soul. Labour and sorrow and loneliness, 
want and hard words and ill-usage, had stripped the glory 
of youth from her, and hastened the coming of age. 

“Men! . . she said as she banged her broom on the 
doorpost of the woodshed, and shut her lips on things un¬ 
said, which the single word conveyed. Too simple of sbul 
for irony, she could yet appreciate grimness, which after 
the fashion of her simple type she expressed by the word 
‘queer/ 

’Twas unod’ny queer that in Braby, fits of amorousness 
alternated with indifference, or outbreaks of furious anger 
that endangered its object’s life. 

That Mackilliveray should covet, with such frenzy of 
desire, that which was held so cheaply by its owner, was 
not only queer, but a clinching proof of the unreasonable¬ 
ness of men! 

Did Braby suspect his boon-fellow of dogging his wife’s 
footsteps? Did he guess at the passion that had wrung 
that blundering avowal from the man? When she shut 
her eyes she could see him, stammering and scowling in 
the doorway,—the red hair on his forehead clotted with 
sweat, like an over-driven bull’s. 

Should her Master ever learn what had set in those pale 
eyes that strange uncanny glower, and made those thick 
and calloused hands tremble like a palsied man’s, would 
Braby laugh his jarring laugh, or be angered like a decent 
husband? He would have been wild with anger once, but 
now she did not know. . . . 

Mackilliveray was gone, at last, and that was matter 
for thankfulness. He had lost her her place with his glow¬ 
ering, and set Tolleymead gossips agog. Gone, and for 
good! Well, if it were true! but something in the manner 
of his departure, following on her last rebuff, was sinister 
and ‘queer.’ 

The ruthless strength she had sensed in him made her 


168 The Pipers of the Market Place 

doubtful of his yielding. She felt there was something 
lurking behind his open abandonment of the chase. If 
beaten, he would have slunk away. The message sent by 
Stephen heralded another move on his part, towards the 
gaining of his unacknowledged end. 

She was simple and pure as those women of old who 
followed the Teacher of Nazareth. She had trodden her 
thorn-beset pathway alone, and never been tempted aside. 
The strength of her arm and the truth of her heart had 
cowed many a would-be seducer, and the tricks of lewd 
bachelors and blacksliding wives were abhorrent in the 
sight of her eyes. 

She looked down on Mackilliveray as a ‘brazen-faced 
chap’ who paid court to the wife of another. She knew 
relief at his going and hoped he would never come back! 
And yet she had thrilled at the clumsy tale his stammer¬ 
ing lips had told her. A wisht woman, an ill-used wife 
with thirty-four years to her burden. ... It had been 
balm to the ache of her pride to know herself still de¬ 
sired ! 


19 

It was a clear and windless day, cold, but no longer 
frosty. Even warm and genial for a day in middle Janu¬ 
ary. The smoke-brown woods, their uniform hue broken 
here and there by larches, walled in a vast and flattish tract 
of arable and pasture-land. 

At the bottom of the garden was a dry grass-dyke, banked 
high on the side next the wheatlands. The end of the dyke 
nearest the house terminated in a deep field-drain. The 
gulley that snored at her back door carried, by its rusty 
length of piping, the suds from Malvina’s wash-tub and 
the rinsings from Malvina’s sink to this accommodating 
drain. Deep and wet at the bottom, even in droughty 
weather, and covered at the sides with herbage, starred 
with yellow fritillary in June, the field-drain accompanied 
the right-of-way across the sixty-acre; ending in the strip 
of woodland that ran beside the Great North Road. 

A hazel coppice clothed the bank at the bottom of the 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 169 

little garden. Halfway up the bank on the garden-side 
was the stump of an ancient oak. Under its roots was a 
badger-hole that harboured a pair of foxes. Tufts of 
bloodstained feathers and fur sometimes hung on brambles 
near the hole. 

Malvina, to whom the creatures of the fields were dear, 
would remove such damning traces, burning them in her 
cooking-fire, or burying them beneath dead leaves. Peep¬ 
ing on dark dawns, or moonless nights from the sideward 
window of the dwelling-room, she would see a slender 
dog-like shape on the ancient oak-tree stump. 

Then the lost dimple that Stephen mourned would show 
in her cheek’s thinned oval,—the old humour would quirk 
the corners of her deep-cut lips, and she would laugh to 
herself. And though the mouse that nibbled crumbs by 
the hearth would not heed, even though it heard her, yet 
the brush-tailed watcher on the oak-stump blotted into 
shadow at the sound. . . . 

Malvina laughed, and yet she knew that in the middle 
of the night that followed, or at the dark hour heralding 
the dawn of another day, there would be quackings or 
squawkings in some farmer’s duck-pen or poultry-house, 
and that tufts of bloodstained plumage caught amongst the 
brambles, would indicate to the seeing eye, the road to the 
murderer’s den. . . . 

Integrity has its breaking-point. That upright soul, Mal¬ 
vina, who would have died rather than shield human dis¬ 
honesty, would take a rake and cover up the trail of the 
four-footed brigand. This day, when she went forth from 
her house to breathe air untainted by Haybitt, as she crossed 
the dyke and mounted the bank, and passed through the 
hazel-copse, she stooped and picked a tuft of snow-white 
down from a bramble that crossed her pathway, and put 
it in her pocket, meaning to burn it later on. And the 
round black eyes of a robin that stood neck-deep in the 
chilly rain-water that filled a hollow on the top of the de¬ 
caying stump of the oak, exchanged with hers the confi¬ 
dent look of perfect understanding that passes between the 
creature and the human who only loves it enough. 


170 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

The object of her motherly search came in sight when 
she was halfway across the wheatacres. To her left, within 
a temporary enclosure of posts and wire and hurdles, a 
parcel of young wethers had been folded down to fatten 
on a patch of swedes. 

The sheep, of the hornless Romney Marsh breed, with 
white legs and mild white faces, had eaten the green tops 
down to the ground, in the earlier part of the day. Now 
they had been driven into the sheltered end of the fold, 
and barricaded there with hurdles, while their shepherd 
dug up the swedes with a fork, amidst the baaing of the 
hungry mob. Outside the sheepfold gate stood the wheel¬ 
barrow in which he had brought the extra hurdles. His 
dinner-basket lay in the barrow, with the jacket he had 
thrown off. 

Stephen was helping the shepherd at his job, picking up 
the swedes and carrying them to the barricaded corner 
where the woolly captives huddled, crying to be released. 
He looked busy and cheerful, and very much a boy, as he 
tipped the heaping armfuls in amongst the greedy, crowd¬ 
ing creatures, and grinned at the sight of the scramble 
that ensued. 

“Yo’re late at work,” Malvina said, “seem’ as it be a 
half-day.” 

“Mr. May he gi’ me th’ job,” explained Stephen, re¬ 
ferring to their employer. “An’ I’m to have another eigh- 
teenpence to-week for helpin’ Tom Pover wi’ the shep¬ 
herdin’. An’ Tom Pover says that’s more nor he got when 
he were risin’ fourteen. An-” 

“An’ you’ll hev’ him making up to the girls next thing,” 
said Tom, who was Pover’s eldest. “An’ walkin’ out wi’ 
’em on Sundays, in a coat wi’ tails an’ a—wh—whoy!” 

He broke off to dodge a rotten swede hurled by the vic¬ 
tim of his pleasantry, and then went on in his character¬ 
istic vein of circumlocutory wit: 

“Since we sawed you at the Farm this momin’, Mrs. 
Braby, there’s been a loss to the community. Nor I 
wouldn’t be surprised, if when Monday comes, you find 
the Mistress in her grumps.” 

The ‘grumps’ meant the sulks, in the homely but forcible 





How Stephen Fell in hove with a Rose 171 

phraseology of Tolleymead, where the temper of the mis¬ 
tress of the Dairy was known, and discussed as the weather 
might be. 

“Med-be one o’ th’ White Spanish hens ha’ got lost?” 
guessed Malvina, internally certain. 

‘‘You’ve hit it. The plump little pullet that’s always 
a-flying th’ pen. Mrs. May she had a terrible handful of a 
chase wi’ her on’y the day before yes’day; an’ this mornin’ 
when she carried ’em down the breakfast scraps that plump 
little pullet warn’t there. An’ so Father—when he goes to 
git some clover-hay for the calves—finds her pore head 
lyin’ under th’ haystack. Bit off as clean as a whistle,” 
said Tom, ending with a touch of pathos; “an’ cheek-be- 
jowl wi’ the last egg she’ll ever lay in th’ world.” 

Guilty knowledge of the bit of bloodstained white fluff 
in her pocket checked Malvina’s utterance. 

“Dun yo’ reckon as ’twer-” 

“The fox, sure enough!” agreed Torn,, finishing his dig¬ 
ging, wiping his fork, after cleaning his boots on it, and 
beginning to pull up the hurdles. “Wi’-out fear of God or 
man, you might say, a four-legged varmint need be,—as 
to go and do a thing like that in the very face o’ day!” 

“Would he come fro’ a goodish ways off, should yo’ 
say ?” asked Malvina, shocked at her own artfulness. 

“Mr. May he’s sartain sure he do,” said Tom, who ad¬ 
mired Mr. May. “Mr. May he’ve marked all the burrers 
about here, an’ he knows every one o’ th’ foxes. . . . An’ 
he says this be a big, old, wise dog-fox, as be far too well 
knowed in his own parts, an’ ha’ got to travel ten mile a 
night fur to git his bellyful! An’ when he cotched that 
Spaniard hen, he made a bumping meal off her, an’ he’ll 
lay up snug, an’ sleep till dark, an’ then pint his noase for 
home. There’s a hole he’ve dug under th’ laurel-hedge 
where yon bit o’ woodlan’ jines it,” went on Tom, point¬ 
ing to the belt of ash and oak that ran by the Great North 
Road, “an’ there he’ll find a gin-trap set, and some bits o’ 
pisened liver, in case he takes it in his head to try his 
luck again afore he goes!” 

“ ’Tis wonnerful,” sighed the false Malvina, what Mr. 
May do know about th’ critturs!” 



172 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“You’re right there, missus,” agreed Tom, piling the 
hurdles on a barrow and pulling on his coat. 

“An’ ’tis bad about th’ hen,” said Malvina, “when she’d 
just beginned to lay so well.” 

“She’s no more chanst to keep her head,” said Tom, 
“wi’ a clever fox like that ’un,—than I used t’ have ten 
year agone, when you’d pluck me cap off me own. An’ 
hitch it over a wall you would!—or a hedge—or a house 
fur that matter!” 

“Eh!—I wunna do they fool things no more. I were 
young i’ them days!” 

“Father’d say,” returned Tom, with a twinkle in his eye, 
“that no woman be ever too old to do what she makes up 
her mind she will do!” 

“An’ there binna’ no more knowledgeabler man as I 
knows on, nor Thomas Pover,” said Malvina, who num¬ 
bered the ploughman and his wife on her scanty list of 
friends. “How bin’ yo’r mother wi’ her swole-up knee ?” 

“ ’Tis easier for the rubbin’,” said Tom. “She says 
you’ve witchcraft in yer hands, an’ spelled her pains away. 
But you’ve not bin nigh us for a long time, Mrs. Braby— 
that you haven’t.” 

“No more I hanna. I’ll look in when I gets a chance. 
Good afternoon to yo’!” 

“Arternoon!” said Tom, pulling on his coat, and pad¬ 
locking the fold-gate. “There’s no more work for ye now, 
Stevey-wag, so you’d better cut yer stick. An’ as for 
what you asked me to rummage out,—ye can come over 
to-night an’ fetch it.” 

“What wer’ yo’ to fetch from Tom’s to-night?” asked 
Malvina as they turned towards home. 

“Nowhat partic’ler!” Stephen blushed, and she sickened 
with foreboding. He was beginning to have secrets of 
his own. “Eh, dear, the men!—the men!” 

Presently through the rugged simplicity of his life would 
run a strip of darker colour, as the rank green herbage of 
the field-drain, that she called a ‘let,’ barred the hedgehog- 
coloured stubbles by the path. 

As she looked at the tops of the tall rank weeds, she 
saw that they were waving. Yes, though there was no 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 173 

wind to stir them. Something was moving below. As 
the sound of her footsteps and her boy’s drew near, the 
weed-tops left off waggling. The unseen traveller was lying 
stone-still, until they should have gone by. And a whiff of 
a rank and musky kind stole to her acquainted nostrils,— 
the kind of whiff that makes a seasoned hound throw up 
his head and give tongue. She paused as though to scan 
some point of interest in the distance, and said deliber¬ 
ately and distinctly, as Stephen halted too: 

“If I were a cunnin’ old grey Fox, as had ate a young 
white Spaniard pullet,—an’ framed to have another bird 
out o’ th’ same pen,—I’d ha’ better wits than risk myseln 
where th’ master’s laid a gin-trap, an’ strowed bits o’ 
pisened liver about to tempt me,—that I would!” 

She saw Stephen about to interrupt, and touched his 
lips for silence. Together they waited, while the bleating 
from the fold came out of the distance behind. 

Then the pressure of Malvina’s fingers on Stephen’s 
mouth slackened, and she smiled at him, and the deep 
dimple of their happy days showed in her left cheek. For 
the tops of the weeds were waggling again—but in the 
opposite direction. The raider had taken the warning and 
turned his nose for home. 

“Mother, do you reckon as that fox as has his hole in 
th’ dyke at th’ bottom of our garden be th’ one as stole 
Mrs. May’s white hen?” said Stephen with dancing eyes. 
“An’ as that were him, cropin’ down the drain, an’ he 
heard ye, and changed his mind-like?” 

“What isna’ told canna’ be knowed,” said Malvina, teas- 
ingly. 

“You’re a fair Masterpiece, that’s what you be!” said 
Stephen, bubbling with admiration. 

“Ay, an’ yet yo’ won’t tell me, what like o’ thing yo’re 
to fetch from Tom’s to-night!” 

Stephen made no answer. His eye dulled and his under¬ 
jaw projected. He looked sullen and obstinate, and so 
sheepish, that the bleating from the fold behind him might 
have been his natural voice. And the dimple died out of 
Malvina’s cheek, and the quirks at the corners of her lips 
straightened into sternness. Even as the red thief who 


174 The Pipers of the Market Place 

harboured under the oak-stump at the bottom of her gar¬ 
den, moved under the screen of the grasses and weeds in 
the water that told no tales, so her son would move, in the 
fulness of time, where interest or appetite beckoned—and 
no one would blame him for keeping his doings from his 
mother, she knew! 

One law for the men, she thought to herself, and All 
the laws for the women! Women shackled and men free, 
would it always be the same? 

She looked sidewise at Stephen’s fair, curly head, and 
alert, intelligent profile. The clear red and white of his 
wholesome skin, dusted with golden freckles, the black- 
lashed eyes of vivid blue were a well-looking boy’s now. 
He was thin because he was poorly fed, but there was 
plenty of bone in him. And what flesh he carried was 
hard and tough, as the timber of a young oak tree. 

When the hardy boy should become a man, strong and 
self-willed and handsome, asked the pitiless voice that 
nagged at her ear, what sort of man would he be? Would 
the Braby blood in him overcome the strain derived from 
his mother? Would she find in him the son of her hopes, 
or the son of her secret fears? . . . 

Now he said, his blue eyes ranging over the wide ex¬ 
panse of the wheatlands, banded with the brown furrows 
left by the plough along the northern hedge, and silver- 
grey where the stubbles began—and so on till the line of 
the field-drain beyond and the rutted cart-track, and the 
right-of-way, made a narrow streak of vivid green next a. 
stripe of dirty white: 

“Mother, if this wer’ a Market-ground, wi’ acres o’ 
flowers growin’ and houses an’ houses of shinin’ glass, 
wouldn’t it just be grand?” 

“Ay, an’ supposen the apple-trees bore apples o’ gold 
an’ silver, an’ the goose-gogs, curran’s an’ rasps on th’ 
bushes were emeral’s an’ rubies!” she chid. “An’ the sky 
came down low so as us could catch larks—an’ the pigs 
ran about ready-roasted, wi’ knives an’ forks a-stickin’ in 
the cracklin’ on their backs. What ha’ th’ farmer done t’ 
yo\ lad, as yo’d rob ’un of his livin’?” 

“Nothin’, an’ I wouldn’t take it. I was on’y thinkin’ 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 175 

a bit . . . Mother! . . . What like is it inside them gates 
as they’ve got to the drive at Brabycott? Why ha’ you 
alius told me I mus’n’ ever go there ?” 

“What like is it beyon’ the gates?” She was not chilled 
by the question, asked her at intervals by Stephen since 
his sixth or seventh year. “Gardens an’ stables an’ th’ big 
House. Home-farm an’ park an’ paddocks. Plough an’ 
medder, an’ pasture-land—an’ theer yo’ have it all! Once, 
when I’d been married scarcelins a year, I walked theer 
wi’ yo’r Father. On a summer night, wi’ a big bright 
moon, an’ the air smellin’ sweet wi’ hay. An’ I thowt to my- 
seln, grand as it were;—If I’d to choose betwixt th’ cottage 
wi’ my man—an’ th’ girt big House wi’out him,—I’d 
fare to take th’ cottage an’ th’ man, an’ let the big House 
go!” 

She stopped, for the unforgotten scene rose up before 
her clearly. An avenue of chestnut-trees, their bloom not 
fallen yet. A long flagged terrace with a sunken wall, and 
an ancient house, shaped like an L of red brick, faced with 
freestone; its many windows black as pitch, or winking 
at the moon. 

Would that it had lain in ashes then! Would that the 
.» banks that held the wicked money had broken, and that 
the lands to the last half-acre had been auctioned and parted 
away. It was a queef, uncanny place, and had been the 
ruin of the father. What if a day should come when it 
should prove the ruin of the son? 

What was he saying, in the boyish voice that sounded 
stronger and older, in keeping with the purposeful, reso¬ 
lute look on the handsome? fair young face! 

“Mother, I wants to see Brabycott. You’ve held out as 
I’m never to go theer. But ’tis said as Mr. Grundall be 
growin’ there all manner o’ stuff for the Markets, an’ 
Crunch an’ Todd, from Tolleymead, be two o’ th’ new 

gardeners took on.” . 

“If th’ truth wer’ told o’ Grundall,” returned Malvina 
in her forthright fashion, “he’ve bin’. croppin th glands 
an’ garden-grounds o’ Brabycott fur thirteen year. Tisn^ 
two year sin’ he bought th’ place, or was told of as havin 
bought it. Go an’ look at it fur yo’rseln sin’ yo’ keeps on 


176 The Pipers of the Market Place 

a hankerin' an' hankerin’. Tis plain yo’r mother’s wishen’s 
be nought to yo’ no more.” 

He looked at her, and she read in his blue eyes that he 
would not disobey her. Once again she had conquered 
through the strength of her indomitable will. But her 
knees shook and her stout heart quailed and her soul fainted 
within her, and she was fain, to her own surprise, to sit 
down on the boundary-stone. 

20 

The boundary-stone, marking some ancient right or lib¬ 
erty of the Parish, had stood within the memory of the 
oldest folks by the cart-track that ran with the field-path, 
perhaps a quarter of a mile from the Braby’s two-roomed 
house. A block of weathered granite, its angles rounded 
by contact with the more reposeful surfaces of human anat¬ 
omy. Courting couples inevitably gravitated towards the 
boundary-stone. If you sat down and held on to your 
girl, there was just enough room for two. Fagged la¬ 
bouring-men would sit on the stone to light a pipe as they 
went homewards, and mothers or wives, carrying dinners 
afield, would halt there for a rest. 

'‘An’ joy go wi’ yo’!” Malvina said, sighing as she seated 
herself. “Th’ Lord He knows th’ sorrow as that place 
ha’ brung to me!” But she did not discourage Stephen’s 
arm round her waist, as he perched on the stone beside her, 
because unless one of them held on, there was really not 
room for two. . . . 

“But, Mother,” he began, knitting his fair brows and 
crinkling his black-lashed eyelids, as always when he was 
earnest over what he had to say: “If that ther’ Will hadn^ 
got lost, Brabycott ’ud belong to us. Wouldn’ it, Mother ?” 

A curious faintness she had felt of late came creeping 
over her, and for a moment the landscape spun, and she 
swayed as though about to fall. An iron hand seemed to 
close about her heart, and the power of speech failed her. 
The afternoon sun, moving to the west, threw their inter¬ 
mingled shadows far beyond them. . . . But a blacker 
shadow had fallen on her, and blotted out her one last 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 177 

hope. The thing she had dreaded had come to pass. . . . 
Then, as Stephen’s voice called her, and his hand touched 
the hands that lay frozen in her lap, she heard herself 
crying to him: 

“My boy, my boy! yo’ dunnot know what ’tis as yo’ be 
sayin’!” 

“Why, Mother, what’s th’ matter?” he cried. “You 
looks at me so queer 1” 

She mastered her mouth that was twisted and wrung 
with the gall that brimmed her chalice, and mustered all 
the strength she had, that she might plead with him: 

“Never heed my looks. If yo’d but have seed what yo’r 
Father were before he went to London, yo’d gag at the 
thought o’ that money—as have made him what yo’ sees 
him now!” 

“Tain’t th’ money,” asserted Stephen. “ ’Tis the wantin’ 
of th’ money.” 

“It binna! His sister Ann she had it, and what did it 
bring to she? An’ his father had it, as got it from his 
own father as made it—th’ Lord’s his judge if iver brass 
wer’ made in a wickeder way! Eh! whether ’em has it 
an’ keeps it, or whether ’em hanna’ it an’ wants it—that 
money ha’ bin to th’ Brabys what fluke be i’ th’ sheep!” 

“Mother, how did they git it ?” 

“How-” Yes, he should hear the story—this boy 

who was so like her in feature, but whose mind might be 
as alien from hers as the North is from the South. “ ’Tis 
hard for me to tell yo’, bein’ an onlearned woman, nor 
niver havin’ book-lear’ beyond th’ Testament. Yet it mun 
be along o’ this—things I ha’ heerd I clings to! An’ this 
yo’r Father telled me afore him an’ me wer’ wed. Fur I 
wer’ livin’ wi’ people as I could bide no longer; an’ he 
took me to a decent lodgin’ kep’ by a decent soul. An’ 
theer I bode till he married me, by licence,” said Malvina— 
“the axins takin’ a power o’ time for puttin’ up i’ Church.” 

“Ay, Mother, but th’ money?” Stephen’s eyes shone 
bright as sapphires. 

“Ay, yea, th’ money! that be th’ Braby’s song. But 
yo’r Father hated the word o’ it—an’ me laughin’ to hear 
him say so, he telled me the way ’twas gotten,” said Mai- 



178 The Pipers of the Market Place 

vina—“an’ then I laughed no more. Have yo’ iver heerd of 
a wicked Trade as Government ha stopped now, as was 
drove by ships from London Docks, an Bristol, an Lan¬ 
caster an* Liverpool,—an’ wer’ called by folks Th Slave 
X ra( ie?—Think hard afore yo’ answers!” 

The bright blue eyes hers questioned had at first no 
answer in them. Then Stephen remembered something he 
had read in a book that had been his father’s. In The Lives, 
Crimes and Exploits of Celebrated Buccaneers and Sea 
Rovers, there were brief, occasional references to Slave- 
Ships taken at sea. . . . 

He nodded, wrinkling his forehead in the effort to re¬ 
member. . . . 

“Sellin’ o’ Black Men—that ’ud be tradin’ in Slaves, 
wouldn’ it? You showed me a Black Man onst,” said 
Stephen, “along of a Menaggery. An’ he were an ugly feller 
enough. Be all Black Men like that ’un?” 

She did not immediately answer. A bird had alighted 
on the muddy path a little distance away. As it pecked 
at the ground in search of food she slipped her hand in 
her pocket, and brought out a fragment of bread, reserved 
from some scanty meal of her own. 

“Black folks be ugly, yo’ reckon. Eh, but I’ll show yo’ 1 
Here, Pretty!” 

The blackbird heard. It hopped farther away. 

“Pretty, Pretty, Pretty!” called Malvina, crumbling 
bread between her fingers. 

“He’ll never come,” affirmed Stephen. “Theer’s no 
coaxin’ any bird so shy as th’ blackbird be.” 

“Come then, my Pretty-Pretty!” called Malvina, scat¬ 
tering bread-crumbs. 

The blackbird hopped still farther away, and then hopped 
back at an angle from which it was possible to scan the 
humans seated on the stone. 

“While he doesn’ cry ‘chack’ I’ve hopes o’ him,” said 
Malvina. “Keep yo’quiet. . . . Pretty! Pretty!” 

The blackbird hopped a little nearer with its bright 
eye fixed on her. Round the black bright eye was a tawny- 
yellow ring, matching its beak in colour, and its plumage 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 179 

was black as ebony, or unpolished black coral, or bog- 
oak. ... Its slender, powerful, elegant shape seemed 
framed for grace and swiftness, and its slim, strong legs 
might have been wrought of delicately-blackened steel. And 
though, like the robin, its lustrous glance confidently met 
Malvina’s, its trust in her was counterpoised by its keen 
suspicion of the boy. . . . Yet it came to her feet and took 
of the crumbs with delicate sharp-set eagerness, as though 
of late its table had been a meagre one. 

“Yo’ve a pretty brown wife, my pretty Black Man,” 
said Malvina, smiling as she watched him. ‘‘I’ll frame to 
lay a penny as she’s upping proud o’ yo’. An’ if village lads 
should lime yo’, would yo’ break yo’r heart wi’ frettin’, 
or learn to sing wi’ rusty wires betwixt yo’ an’ the free air?” 

“Mother-” began Stephen, but with the word the 

blackbird’s courage failed him. Those boys! . . . He 
seized the biggest bit within reach, and flew, chacking, 
across the fields. 

“Mother, didn’ folks get mortal rich by sellin’ black men 
and women?” 

Malvina answered: 

“Mortal rich. For black men an’ women, an’ boys an’ 
girls, an’ sucklin’s—they’d bring their prices, when they 
come trampin’ down in gangs from th’ places wheer they 
wer’ trapped or sold. Fur they was sold in droves like hogs, 
or stood in th’ markets an’ bid fur. By Christians as be¬ 
lieved—in them bad old days—they’d no right to their 
bodies nor their souls!” 

The bright eyes fixed upon her face had a dawning of 
horror in them. Her sick heart lifted on a wave of hope 
that gave her courage to go on. 

“They’d done no wrong, as th’ Lord had made them 
Black, an’ set ’em in their country; an’ if they prayed to 
stocks an’ stones, ’twas all the prayin’ they knowed. They 
lived on corn an’ milk, an’ fruit, an’ meat they cooked in th’ 
sunshine; it being so powerful hot in them parts, they didn 
need no does. But—in th’ Furtherest Places—by-times 
they’d ate each other—an’ then they’d roast the corpse, an’ 
keep its teeth an’ hair for charms.” 




180 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Cannerbils. I’ve heerd on ’em!” said Stephen, with 
a sigh of rapture. “Theer’s a pictur’ in Robinson Crusoe 
of ’em dancin’ round a Fire.” 

“Cannerbils let call ’em who may choose. The men 
as hunted an’ trapped ’em, or bought ’em from their Kings 
in droves fur Calico Prints, an’ brass Rings,—an sold em 
to the Slave-merchants as sent the ships, fur thousands o 
silver dollars, to be shipped to the West Injies an’ sold again 
fur ten times th’ money paid! them an’ th’ Dealers as traded 
wi’ ’em,” said Malvina, “was worse nor Cannerbils. I d 
rather set down wi’ a Cannerbil nor I would wi one o 
they l” 

21 

She brushed from her broad forehead with the back of 
her hand some drops that had started upon it. In that 
instant Stephen noticed for the first time that her hair 
was streaked with grey. 

“I mun tell yo’ theer be Noblemen in this here land as 
got their riches from Slavery. I cannowt tell how they 
looks on it. . . . ’Twould seem Disgrace to me. . . . 
Yo’r great-grandfather were a Liverpool man as owned 
Slave-ships. Ay, an’ sailed ’em 1” 

Stephen’s eyes were blazing now, and his eager lips were 
apart. . 

“Me bein’ an ignorant woman, I cannowt put it Book¬ 
like. But when yo’r gran’father were i’ his cups—as he 
drank regular an’ stiddy!—he’d tell these tales to his daugh¬ 
ter Miss Ann, an’ fright his poor weakly wife wi’ ’em,— 
an’ she telled ’em to Susan Parmint—an’ yo’r Father he 
had ’em from she! Braby’s ships ’ud sail fro’ Liverpool, 
laded wi’ goods from Brummagem an’ Cotton Prints from 
Manchester, for them Ports of the Blacks’ country. For 
Guinea Land they laid their heliums, an’ Guinea is in Africa. 
An’ the Grain Coast an’ the Ivory Coast, an’ the Gold Coast, 
an’ the Slave Coast—is where the traders got their wealth— 
but most came from Slavery.” 

Stephen listened, drinking in the halting sentences of 
the story. Her words had no grace or eloquence, but her 
great sad eyes and her tragic mouth lent it pathos and 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 181 

mystery. . . . She went on, in her full rich tones, as the 
keen breeze dropped towards sunset, and the birds that 
were busy on the new-ploughed lands made the last meal 
of the day. 

“Theer be two Rivers on th’ Slave Coast as falls into 
th’ salt water. Bonny be th’ name o’ one, th’ other I ha’ 
forgot. Theer s a town by the name o’ Bonny too, standin’ 
in the swamp by th’ river, full o’ prisons called Calabooses 
wheer th’ traders kep’ th’ Slaves. An’ ’acause th’ town o’ 
Bonny were ate up wi’ Fever an’ Ague, the white Slave 
merchants and Slave-hunters, when they’d come to meet th’ 
Slaver Ships, bided in flat-boats such as yo’d see on our 
canals an’ rivers, moored in th’ current, out o’ reach o’ th’ 
poison fro’ th’ swamps.” 

“An’ the Black folks?” inquired Stephen. 

“The Black folks as kep’ cornin’ down in Chain-gangs 
from th’ back-lands—druv’ by men as rode a-horseback 
an’ carried pistols an’ loaded whips!—they lived—or Died 
when they couldn’ live—in the Calaboose,” said Malvina; 
“th’ town o’ Bonny by th’ Bonny being a Slave-town, built 
fur slaves. An’ th’ Captains o’ th’ Slave-ships as were 
anchored at th’ mouth o’ th’ river, they’d come rowing up 
in their galleys wi’ twenty men at the oars. An’ they’d 
climb aboard the flat-boats, where the long cane chairs ’ud 
be ready for ’em, and the black-boys as served the Slave- 
merchants ’ud bring ’em iced punch an’ cigars. A free, 
wild, wicked life they lived. Drinkin’ an’ gamblin’ and 
smokin’. Chaffering an’ bargaining an’ gathering gold. 
Eh, th’ folly o’ men!” 

“An’ ’tis all stopped now? You said so.” 

“Thank th’ Lord, as even in they bad days there were 
men as cried Shame upon th’ Slave Trade! It took twenty 
year, yo’r Father said, to stop it, but stopped it wer’! A 
day come when fur an’ Englishman to have meddlins wi^ 
that wickedness wer’ punished by Transportation, ’cordin’ 
to English Law.” 

“An’ they all quit off a-doin’ it?” 

“A goodish few on ’em quit it. But Braby an Braby 
wer’ one o’ th’ Firms as kep’ to th’ game on th’ sly. Plague 
and Pestilence they’d broke out among the slaves on th 


182 The Pipers of the Market Place 

West Injy Islands, an’ the Planters as growed of the 
Sugar-cane was biddin’ fur more an more. I mind that 
bit special, fur niver havin’ heerd afore o’ Sugar growin’ 
in sugar-canes,” said Malvina, and fell silent for so long 
a time that Stephen jogged her for more. , 

“You bain’t goin’ to stop wi’out tellin’ th’ rest. Twouldn 
be fair!” he whimpered. 

“ Tis dimmin’ fur Dark,” said Malvina, “an’ th’ wind 
be carryin’ snow. An’ ’tis queer, but through talkin’ o’ 
they Islands, I a’most framed to see ’em. Wi’ th’ hot Sun 
a-shinin’ on th’ Cocoa-nut trees, an’ th’ flowers all manner 
o’ colours, like th’ birdies your Father told about, ^as be 
nigh so bright as they. An’ th’ rows o’ sheds in th’ Plan¬ 
tations, full o’ Black men an’ women an’ children, dyin’ o’ 
the Pest like lung-sick sheep—an’ their Masters callin’ fur 
more! An’ th’ Slave-ships hurryin’ from Guinea, as loaded 
wi’ Slaves fur th’ Planters, as they wer’ Packed like peas 
in a maund, wi’ scarcelins air to breathe. Chained down in 
rows to the Planks o’ th’ ship, an’ the Dead tooken out i’ 
th’ momin’s—or chopped out wi’ axes yo’r Father said; 
an’ pitched to the Sharks in th’ Sea!” 

Stephen was huddling close to her now. 

“Such Fever brewed in th’ crowded Holds o’ th’ Slave- 
ships,” went on Malvina, “that th’ broadly men as passed 
through th’ rows givin’ ’em their water an’ meal—’ud be 
stricken with it sudden-like an’ drop down among ’em, an’ 
be Fetched out dyin’ by their comrades if so be they werena’ 
dead. Pest to pest; the pest-ships carryin’ Pestilence to th’ 
plague-smitten Islands. Eh, eh! Merciful Lord, th’ 
naughtiness o’ men!” 

Stephen, with his head in the old safe place, and her 
strong arm thrown around him, butted her in rather a 
calf-like way, to signify that he wanted more. 

“They whistled for Wind, yo’ may be sure,” said Mal¬ 
vina, “with their Cargo spoilin’: an’ maybe an English 
Cruiser followin’ hot behind. . . . Ther’ wer’ what be 
called Prize Money to be paid to th’ officers an’ men o’ 
th’ Cruisers,—if so be they run down o’ th’ Slave-ships at 
sea, full up wi’ their cargo o’ Blacks. So they’d let ’em 
git started afore they’d give Chase-” 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 183 

Stephen squirmed with increasing excitement. 

“An’ the smartest o’ th’ Slave Captains ’ud gi’ ’em th’ 
slip. . . . One o’ they clever Captains wer’ Braby.” 

Stephen lay as still as a mouse. 

“Did yo’ hear me?” 

Stephen nodded. 

“That there Braby wer’ yo’r great-gran’father, the 
second partner in th’ Firm. A family man wi’ three 
growed-up sons, an’ a wife as wouldn’ live wi’ ’im. Her 
blood wer’ turned wi’ th’ wickedness o’ th’ man, an’ her 
gorge riz at his very sight.” 

The arm round Stephen tightened till it hurt him. Then 
the pressure slackened and Malvina went on: 

“She’d gone forth of his house wi’ her penny that she’d 
had when her an’ him wer’ first wedded. An’—though 
Captain George Braby were a wealthy man,—her younger 
sons went too. Josiah an’ Amos they was named—an’ the 
eldest o’ th’ three as was yo’r gran’father—he sailed wi’ 
Captain Braby on th’ Slave-ship as cargo-clerk/ ’Tis mor¬ 
tal queer as there ’ud be clerks aboard ships,” said Stephen’s 
mother wonderingly, “but this wer’ a cargo such as never 
they’d clapped under hatches till then. Th’ last an’ th 
biggest venture afore Braby gin’ up th’ Slave Trade. Maybe 
he thought as his wife an’ his sons ’ud come back once 
he quit it fur good.” 

Her rude but heartfelt eloquence and the deep music of 
her rich contralto lent to the musty wickedness of dead- 
and-gone Brabys a living thrill of horror that passed into 
Stephen’s blood. Grim tragedy was in the air. He sensed 
it as he shuddered, hoping the story would frighten him, 
and wishing that it mightn’t. 

“They got th’ Slaves stowed about the ship, said his 
mother, “in the Fore Hold an’ th’ After Hold, though I’m 
no-ways clear in my head-like what Holds an’ Hatches 
means. An’ they stowed ’em in th’ Twin-decks an they 
stowed ’em on the Main decks, wi’ iron fetters on their 
arms an’ legs, an’ then they Put to Sea. They looked to 
ther’ sails fur to Carry ’em—havin’ no Steamships in they 
days; an’ whativer else yo’r great-gran’father were, he 

1 She meant supercargo’s clerk, possibly. 


184 The Pipers of the Market Place 

were Seaman through an’ through! He were chased by 
two Cruisers, an’ outspanked ’em till they gin up th chase 
as no good on!—an’ when th’ Wind fell to a Dead Callum, 
it nobbut vexed him a bit. He cursed an’ swore an’ fumed 
fur a whiles, an’ then clapped hisseln down in his Cabin, 
an’ sent fur two out o’ his five Mates t’ drink an’ smoke 
wi’ ’im.” 

Stephen wriggled with sheer delight. Malvina went on 
slowly: 

“Th’ other Ship’s Mates they stopped on Deck keepin’ 
an’ eye on th’ Weather, an’ readyin’ to clap on ivery Sail 
as soon as th’ Wind ’ud blow. . . . Then one on ’em as 
had bin scannin’ wi’ his glass, he come runnin’ down to 
Cap’n Braby’s cabin wi’ his eyes a-starin’ out on his head, 
an’ his face as white as curd. For they’d give two o’ they 
Government Cruisers th’ slip, but Another wer’ showin’ 
ahead on ’em: small i’ th’ distance as a fly on a pane, but 
movin’ wi’ th’ drift o’ th’ tide!” 

Stephen could see a white-faced man with great gold 
earrings in his ears, and bushy jet-black whiskers, burst¬ 
ing into the cabin where the Captain and his mates sat 
over their cigars and rum. 

“Th’ wind it got up, but what use o’ th’ wind but to 
hurry th’ chasers behind ’em,—an’ to carry ’em down 
on the other, as wer’ makin’ ready wi’ her guns! So 
they took th’ bags of gold dollars as Braby kep’ in his 
cabin, an’ sank th’ ship’s books wi’ a weight to ’em, an’ 
took to the ship’s Boats. One white man wer’ missin’, 
an’ who wer’ that man, would yo’ ask me? Yo’r gran’- 
father Geoffrey Braby, as served as second Cargo 
Clerk. An’ they put off wi’out him, an’ layed-to a while, 
on their Rowers, ontil they seed him come up on th’ 
Deck.” 

Stephen knew his grandfather couldn’t have been burned 
or drowned, being buried in Tolleymead Churchyard, in 
the Vault that hadn’t been opened since,—even when his 
Aunt Ann had died. 

“He’d a little light boat, like th’ Black folks use, as 
wer’ worked wi’ a Paddle,” said Malvina, “an’ he lowered 
it an’ follered it an’ got in, an’ Paddled after the boats. 



How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 185 

An' they took him into th’ Cap’n’s boat, an’ Rowed away 
over th’ Water-” 

‘‘Leavin’ the Black men an’ women behind?” asked 
Stephen, feeling chilly down the back. 

“Black men an’ women an’ childern too. Packed like 
herrin’s in a barril. An’ th’ Sun sank down an’ it wer’ 
Night. But th’ Night wer’ nigh as bright as th’ day.” 

“How then?” 

“With th’ light o’ th’ Slave-ship as Braby’s son had 
set Fire to afore he left her. All had bin ’ranged fur 
burnin’ her, before they sailed fro’ Guinea,—wi’ barrils 
o’ taller an’ tar an’ oil, an’ fuses ready to ketch. An’ when 
th’ Fire reached th’ kegs o’ spirits as they’d aboard, 
accordin’ to yo’r Father,” said Malvina, “th’ Slave-ship 
were burned down to th’ edge o’ th’ sea ’fore th’ Cruiser 
got to her.” 

“An’ th’ Black folks wi’ her?” gasped Stephen. 

“Burned alive. Twelve hundred souls as th’ Redeemer 
died fur. An’ Braby an’ his son, an’ th’ mates wi’ them, 
played cards by th’ light o’ th’ fire. They sang an’ cut 
jokes an’ made merry as they rowed over them shinin’ 
waters, an’ ate an’ drank, fur th’ boats wer’ Stored wi’ 
iverything they might need. An’ they histed their sails 
when the wind blowed, an’ got them safe to an Island. 
. . . They’d bin paid aforehand—as they alius wer’,— 
an’ Braby he quit th’ sea. He fared to be rich on what 
he’d made,” said Malvina bitterly and grimly. “An’ he 
bought th’ Cott Hall Estate and changed th’ name to Braby- 
cott. But th’ cry as went up fro’ that Ship will sound ontil 
th’ Day o’ Judgment. An’ who covets th’ House or th’ 
Money, or th’ Land—covets th’ price of blood!” 

Strange that the story, bald of detail, inevitably vague 
as to place-names, and hampered by the ignorance of the 
narrator, had power to thrill the boy. 

Void of colour, glamour and mystery, yet Stephen found 
the story enthralling. Sprung from a germ that had har¬ 
boured in the loins of Geoffrey Braby, he saw more than 
Malvina pictured, and realized more than she knew. 

Reef, beach, creek and cay lay outspread before him, 
under skies as yellow as brass or skies of blazing blue. 



18G The Pipers of the Market Place 

Palm-grove, jungle and mangrove-swamp with crocodiles 
sweltering on the margin. Flocks of parrots of rainbow 
hues, and monkeys chattering in the trees. 

Exquisite scents on the tropical breeze. Smells that 
were musky and putrid. Fogs on the tidal rivers, miasmas 
crawling on the land. 

A Slave-town built by Slaves for Slaves on the east¬ 
ward bank of the river. Quays where the ship’s-boats 
waited, rocking on the treacly tide. Stages of planks, up¬ 
holding rows of sheds, built of canes and roofed with 
plantain-leaves. Negroes chained to iron bars running 
down the length of the sheds. 

Men and women and boys and girls. White eyeballs 
flashing in black faces. White teeth showing as the water- 
calabashes and the rice-bowls pass down the ranks. 

“Droop and be sullen, and you get no rice. Look lively, 
and you’re worth the feeding.” This is an axiom the 
loaded whips have flogged into the savage mind. And 
the men who carry the loaded whips, and guard the human 
merchandise, are brown or yellow or white of skin. There 
are many who are white. ... 

Evil-eyed, lustful, foul of speech, whatever be their 
language, with gold rings in their ears and on their fingers, 
cutlasses and pistols in their sashes and the loaded whips 
in their hands. ... 

Not only to avoid mosquitoes and malaria do they 
quarter on board the flat-boats (house-barges built of solid 
timber), but in case of attack by night. Here their ham¬ 
mocks hang under the fly-nets, here their plentiful table 
awaits them. Here are their business offices, where their 
clients are cordially received. 

See the bags of gold from the Slave-ships’ boat brought 
up by the grizzled supercargo. One of his two assistants 
is a young and slender fellow; bronzed, handsome, and 
showily dressed. His dark hair falls in ringlets, whereas 
the iron-grey hair of the Captain is plaited in the old- 
fashioned pigtail. He is a short, spare, elderly man, who 
wears a plain cocked beaver hat and clean white ruffled 
linen, showing at the single breast and cuffs of a full-skirted 
blue cloth coat. There are pistols in his sagging pockets 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 187 

and a cutlass is belted about him, though his shore-going 
blue smallclothes have gilt buckles at the knees, and his sea- 
boots have been changed for buckled shoes. 

See the ledgers lying open on the counter, recording sales 
of negroes; and the scales to weigh the English guineas that 
are welcomed everywhere. One of these plump and hand¬ 
some coins is worth forty-eight livres of Mauritius, two-and- 
a-quarter hard dollars of Portugal, two-and-three-fourths of 
a golden star pagoda of Madras. And eight of them will 
buy a Slave, male, young, and in hard condition; who was 
bought from a slave-raiding negro chief for a set of brass 
manilles. These are the rings that adorn the wrists, the 
upper arm and ankles. . . . They are made by the million 
in Merry England, and exported for the Trade. . . . 

Business done, what a pledging of healths in arrack, 
brandy, and Geneva, and sangaree made with Muscovado 
rum, and mingled with the juice of fresh limes. And then, 
the longboats are signalled from the ship, the bales and cases 
of Manchester and Birmingham goods are landed and the 
boats are packed from stem to stern with chained and man¬ 
acled slaves. And so, up anchor, and away for French, 
Spanish, or Portuguese Colonies,—needing fresh labour 
and fresh blood to revivify the soil. The buyers have paid 
cash in advance, so if Government cruisers prove active— 
scuttle, and take to the boats while she sinks, or burn her, 
and lose them their prize! 

Not for nothing had Stephen spelt his way through the 
volume of Lives and Exploits. The Geoffrey Braby to 
whom it had belonged had been his grandfather. . . . The 
ancient cigars, whose vapid smell clung about the yellowed 
pages, had been smoked by the man, and those splashes of 
wine and coffee had been spilled there by his hand. 

The hand that burned the slave-ship. The bloodstained 
hand of a murderer. . . . Stephen grew giddy, and sick¬ 
ened at the knowledge of his kinship with the wretch. And 
boy as he was, if he could have bled out of his veins the 
blood that belonged to the Brabys, he would have faced the 
ordeal without a quiver of the lips. 

Or so it seemed to him at the time. Now his mother’s 
voice was speaking. 


188 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Nought more’s to tell. Now yo’ knows all. I’ll plead 
wi’ yo’ no furder.” 

She lifted his head from her shoulder, and drew her arm 
from about him, sighing as she rose from her narrow seat 
upon the boundary-stone. She would have moved on home¬ 
wards, but his hand upon her, checked her. He said, with 
that new, determined look that foreshadowed in the boyish 
face the coming of the man: 

“Mother, you’ve got to listen. Now you’ve told me ’bout 
the gettin’ of that money—I’m glad to th’ bottom o’ my 
heart as none on it’ll come our way! I’m glad th’ Will were 
never found. Theer never were a better job than th’ old 
man ’as made it, losin’ it! For I tells ye I’d sooner starve 
to death than touch the dirty stuff!” 

She cried out in the sheer joy of her victory and caught 
him to her bosom; and he flung his young arms round her, 
and hugged her back again. As her eyes went over 
Stephen’s yellow head towards the eastward strip of wood¬ 
land, a figure showed against the smoky-blue of the leafless 
trees behind. 

The man who had waited at the cowyard gate would be 
waiting there again to-morrow. Dull anger burned in Mal¬ 
vina, mingled with sharper scorn. To have blustered and 
bragged about going his gate, and then to come crawling 
back again, seemed to her mind one crowning proof of the 
faithlessness of men. 

She gave one more glance of infinite contempt, but the 
figure was there no longer. It had stepped back, and the 
crowding trees had blotted it from her sight. But a warn¬ 
ing dizziness she had felt of late made the sunset-reddened 
landscape swim before her. 

She moved homewards very silently, with her hand on 
Stephen’s neck. 


22 

Vigilantly as the maternal cat observes the doings of her 
kitten, and with a remote aloofness resembling the cat’s, 
Malvina waited Stephen’s return from Tom Pover’s after 
supper. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 189 

He carried nothing in his hands when he appeared, and 
showed no perceptible bulge upon his person; and yet he 
wore a sheepish air and was very red in the face. 

Braby was at practice with the Ringers, and would be sure 
to wind up at The Pure Drop/ and Stephen, relieved that 
the coast was clear, slipped furtively out again. 

“Pipes an’ ’bacca?” queried Malvina. “Maybe Tom ha’ 
bin’ teachin’ him smokin’.” She smothered a sigh and con¬ 
tinued washing up, and readying the room for the night. 
Then Stephen strode in with a resolute air, carrying an 
oddly-shaped brown-paper parcel. He made for the ladder 
leading to the loft, and Malvina’s heart failed. 

Suddenly Stephen strode back to her side, clapped down 
the parcel on the table, and sternly signed to her to uncover 
the mystery its wrappings concealed. But though her femi¬ 
nine fingers itched, Malvina shook her head at him. 

“I wunna’ ha’ nowt to do wi’ it!” said she, and went on 
with her work. 

Thus rebuffed, Stephen began taking out the pins that 
fastened the brown paper; huge brass pins, and so many of 
these that Malvina was obliged to help. When the final 
wrapping, a single sheet of the Hertfordshire Weekly 
Courier, came off, she started in undisguised dismay. 

On the table stood a chimney-pot hat of an obsolete type 
of architecture. It had weathered some thirty summers, 
but was in good condition yet. 

“My gonnies!” exclaimed Malvina, who seldom resorted 
to an expletive. “Whativer did yo’ frame to do wi’ that 
old scalcrow, lad ?” 

“It bain’t no scarecrow neither!” retorted Stephen huffily. 
“ Tis real silk, an’ a bargain for a shillin’, it be!” 

“Eh!” said Malvina, ruefully regarding the ancient head- 
gear, which shone with the greasy lustre of faithful pol¬ 
ishing. It flanged generously outward at the crown, de¬ 
creasing in girth towards the temples, and the generous curl 
of its brim might have framed the Gladstonian countenance. 

“Eh! I hannot seen that theer owd hat sin’ the Sunday 
yo’ wer’ Chrissuned. John Pover an’ Mrs. Pover corned 
wi’ me, an’ John he wore it then. He dropped it when he 
promised an’ vowed—him standin’ fur yo’r godfather! An’ 


190 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Mrs. Pover, as stood fur godmother, she took it away from 
th’ man.” 

“Well, it ain’t John Pover’s hat no more. He give it to 
Tom,” asserted Stephen, growing restive under this effluence 
of biographical detail. “An’ he’s sold it to me for a shillin’, 
an’ I be goin’ to wear it!” 

“A silver shillin’,” murmured Malvina, “be a terrible sight 
o’ money. Eh, well, let yo’ put it on. But yo’r young for 
it, I sore misdoubt!” 

“ ’Twill make me look older,” said Stephen, and boldly 
assumed his purchase, which—Pover being a big-headed 
man—concealed him to the eyes. 

“My gonnies!” gasped Malvina, and Stephen flushed with 
pleasure, mistaking the unsteady accents of laughter re¬ 
pressed for those of admiration and awe. He had known 
the hat would age him, whereas the venerable headgear in¬ 
tensified to cherubic innocence the youthfulness of his boyish 
face. 

“Eh, well, if yo’ mun wear it, take off that mournin’ 
weeper.” Malvina indicated a six-inch dado of crape that 
encircled the hat. “I reckons as John Pover mun ha’ walked 
in that at his second sister’s burial,” she added, as she ripped 
off the mourning-band and put it away in her drawer. 

It might be wanted one of these days! she thought to 
herself, as Stephen bore the hat to his eyrie, and the mirthful 
tears she wiped from her eyes were mingled with salter 
drops. And then she smiled, and her dimple showed, and 
the corners of her eyes crinkled. The boy was so young, 
so blessedly young! She would have him a long while 
yet. 

One Sunday, dressed in his London clothes,—to test 
the maturing powers of his purchase, Stephen, having first 
improved its fit with a wadding of paper, put it on. Ten 
minutes later, whether by accident or design, the chronicler 
is ignorant, he strolled past the gate of the village school as 
the Sunday Classes streamed out. 

Given the possession of some muscular power and a 
certain amount of science, a boy of twelve can beat three 
out of four untrained boys of his age. But assailed by a 
veritable swarm of boys, issuing from early Sunday 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 191 

School . . . human hornets armed with clods and jeers 
instead of poisoned stings ... 

Stephen gave up, and turned tail, pursued by the Sab¬ 
bath students from the south-east corner of Tolleymead 
Green up the length of the Tolley Brook Road. He ran like 
a hare with the beagles close behind, carefully holding on 
the hat, for his wadding of paper had vanished. And the 
mocking rhyme of his childhood—the same, but with a 
difference—chanted to the immemorial No-tune—accom¬ 
panied him as he ran . . . 

“Your mother be a Gipsy, 

Trampin’ Tinker Gipsy! 

Your Mother be a Gipsy 

An’ your Da be a Drunken Sot!” 

The road had been scraped on Saturday with the rusty 
horse-drawn scraper, and piles of clods at the hedgerow- 
side waited removal later on. A clod dunted Stephen in 
the small of the back, and a stone knocked the hat off. He 
yelled, and dived to retrieve his own, and one of the Ben- 
dall boys kicked it, and Abel Thickbroom (First Prize in 
Old Testament Genealogies) kicked it away from Bendall 
(Second Prize Catechism), whereupon Montague Haybitt 
(Extra Consolation Prize for Regular Attendance) hacked 
at it viciously and fell on it, and it burst and was squashed 
flat. 

Then Stephen saw red, and, roaring, charged into the 
thick of his assailants, and these, foreseeing Hammering 
to come, incontinently fled. And kicking the deplorable 
wreck of Pover’s hat before him, he returned along the 
Tolley Brook Road the poorer by the sum of a shilling, 
though richer by the amount of experience the money had 
bought him; and decidedly older than he had been upon 
the previous day. 

He had meant to buy a stick-up collar, but now he 
renounced the notion. Let it go, with the preposterous 
headgear that had made him a coward just now. Sup¬ 
pose little Lou Buckley had seen him running away from 
ridicule. Let them hoot and howl as much as they liked— 
never would he run again! 


192 The Pipers of the Market Place 

He would cure himself of the fear of things. He was 
afraid of ghosts, for instance, and nothing could have 
bribed him to be in Tolleymead Churchyard at twelve 
o’clock at night. For at that hour the Yew Tree, according 
to local tradition, turned solemnly round three times, no¬ 
body knew why. Also there were certain nights when 
you could see the Liar, smoking a long pipe, and drinking 
out of a bowl of blazing brandy as he leaned against his 
epitaph, carved on the Tower Stone. Well, Stephen would 
go to the Churchyard one night, and wait till Twelve struck 
from the Tower and be bolder for ever after, because of 
the thing he had forced himself to do. 

He kicked the wreck of the hat into the Tolley Brook, 
and saw it start on its journey, hurrying south to see the 
Brent River, and possibly the great Reservoir. Then he 
went home, and jumped the garden-gate, as he used before 
the falling of the Shadow, and even as he landed on the 
narrow brick-paved path, he knew that he had jumped be¬ 
cause he was afraid. . . . 

“How often have I told you not to do that?” Braby 
shouted at him from the window. 

“You never telled me, because I never done it afore,” 
said his son. 

“You have a Tongue then, have you, you young oaf?” 
demanded Braby, coming to the threshold. He had been 
out unusually late, even for him—upon the previous night. 
But he had been unusually sober, for him—when he returned 
in the drizzling daybreak, and had slept heavily, and was, 
in fact, but recently arisen from his bed. 

“I reckon as much—when ’tis wanted,” said Stephen, 
still looking at him boldly, though his nerves were jerk¬ 
ing, and his skin crept with repulsion rather than fear. 

For he hated looking his father in the face. Under 
that narrow, frowning forehead, topped with a sweep of 
lustreless black hair, were eyes that stabbed and stung. 
And the unwholesomely red mouth, under the ragged 
black moustache, was full of jeers and tauntings. Never 
had it uttered a kindly word, within the memory of the 
boy. 

He had had a father who had hated him, Stephen re- 


Sow Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 193 

memberecl. He had grown to the verge of manhood in 
a home that was no home. His old nurse had loved him, 
and Rumbold seemed fondish of him. . . . And Stephen’s 

mother- Could a man be all vile, who had won a love 

like hers? 

Thoughts akin to these, if inchoate and crude, rose in 
the mind of Stephen, and Braby, if he thought at all, was 
sensible of a change in the boy. He had chewed the 
cud of an idea skilfully suggested by Haybitt. The cub 
was getting big and strong. Why not make him of 
use ? 

He was ranging himself on the mother’s side, and this 
would prove inconvenient as he waxed still bigger and 
stronger. To gain an influence over him now would be 
hard, but harder later on. . . . Braby began in a tone 
that was meant to be pleasant and ingratiating: 

“So the village pack were running you, were they, my 
hopeful scion? I heard them giving tongue with that 
damned gibberish of theirs.” 

Stephen answered, clenching the strong young fists that 
hid in his jacket pockets. 

“Ay, but I reckons I give a good few on ’em summat 
more to sing about.” 

“Because you wanted to stick up for your father ? Eh, 
my Trojan?” 

Stephen was shamedly silent. He had hit them, but on 
his own account. Braby went on: y 

“So you have pluck, and can use your fists. Well, that’s 
a thing worth knowing. You have brains under that yellow 
thatch of yours, and a pair of eyes in your head. You 
recognize your father for what he is. A misunderstood, 
ill-used gentleman. Worth any twenty of the canting 
knaves who look down on him, by G \ 

Stephen blushed to his hair-roots with pleasure at this 
praise, though he wriggled and shuffled awkwardly. Mal- 
vina, frying bacon for their mid-day meal, could hardly 

believe her ears. # , 

Here was her Master speaking kind to the boy, and 
praising instead of becalling him! She turned from her 
little old cooking-range to send a glance at the pair. 


194 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

What did it mean? In Malvina’s narrow world, fresh 
events were hailed as portents. After fourteen months of 
indifference and ill-will, and occasional ill-usage, could it be 
possible that the Master was taking to the boy! 

Now he laughed, and the raucous harshness of his mirth 
was mingled with Stephen’s fresh young laughter. What 
they said was lost in the hissing of the bacon and potatoes in 
the pan. Malvina would have given much—she who had 
nought to give any one!—to know the drift of the talk they 
held together at the gate. 

Braby had said, pinching Stephen’s upper arm where 
the tough young muscle swelled it: 

“A biceps. Damme! we shall have you fighting for a 
championship soon! Meanwhile, since I have such a swinge¬ 
ing chap for my son, I shall make use of him. Supposing 
he can hold his jaw as well as use his hands!” 

“Fm as safe as any, I reckon,” said Stephen, “when it 
comes to talkin’ ?” 

Braby chuckled, and the sallow hand that had kneaded 
Stephen’s biceps went round Stephen’s neck as he whis¬ 
pered to the boy what he would have to do. 

It was easy enough. At an hour that seemed the middle 
of the night to Stephen, he was to come down in his clothes 
and boots and let himself quietly out. If his mother were 
awake and spoke to him, he would give an explanation, 
in the homespun terms that neither provoke dispute, nor 
admit of delay. 

He was to take the short hand-hoe from the shed, cross 
the glebe-field behind the tavern, and get over the west- 
side fence of it into the Rectory road. He had better cross 
the Churchyard, because, late as was the hour, he might 
encounter some one in the lane between the Churchyard and 
the Rectory grounds. 

Then he would push on to Copcot Elms at the corner 
of the Tolley Hall coverts. There was a clamp of ’taturs 
in the field that ran along the covert-side. Hidden in 
the clamp at the eastward end, that pointed towards the 
Great North high-road, he would find a sack that weighed 
a bit. . . . He was to make all smooth and neat with the 
hoe, when he had taken out the sack. . . . 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 195 

Then he was to carry the sack to the back of Haybitt’s 
premises. If a man happened to be waiting there and 
said Teas/ he would answer ‘Beans/ Then he would give 
the sack to the man, but if no man were waiting, he would 
dump down the sack at the back of Haybitt’s wall, whoop 
once like an owl—and come home. 

“At quarter to twelve I’d be leavin’ here. At twelve 
I’d be crossin’ th’ Churchyard,” thought Stephen, “and 
I’d pass th’ Liar’s Stone, I would!—an’ if th’ Liar wer’ 
there-” 

He felt a chilly creeping amongst the roots of his curly 
hair, and his shirt grew clammy upon him at the mere 
thought of the advent of the inevitable night. But he 
continued his train of thought, while Braby watched him 
greedily. 

“An’ I’d get me out again over th’ Churchyard wall 
at th’ corner where th’ Yew Tree stands. And if it turned 
itself round three times as they say it do at midnight—it 
couldn’ kill me wi’ turnin’ nor chivy me when I run ...” 

He was less certain about the Liar, for according to 
local legend, that luridly convivial personage was addicted 
to chivying—with the hospitable intention of sharing with 
the chivied his pipe and his blazing brandy. And if any 
one sipped from the Liar’s bowl, or took a whiff of the 
Liar’s tobacco, the Liar was reported to exclaim: ‘Mine!’ 
and whisk his soul down to Hell. 

“Speak up, and say, in the devil’s name!—have you 
got the guts to do it?” snarled Braby, losing his temper 
in his characteristically sudden way. 

“I’ll do it,” said Stephen, turning pale, and with a 
glittering mask of dewdrops covering the surface of his 
face from the forehead to the chin. 

“Shake hands on it, my Trojan, and then come in. to 
dinner!” said Braby, clapping him on the back and offering 
his hand. And Stephen took and shook the hand, and the 
memory of a certain night a twelvemonth back last Novem¬ 
ber, when it had taken him by the chin, rose up in his mind 
anew. 

“There’ll be sixpence or maybe a shilling for yourself,” 
said his father, a moment later. 



196 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“I don’ wan’ it,” responded Stephen in a curious muffled 

growl. , 

“Never turn your nose up at Money. There s nothing 
on earth like it!” said Braby, and took him by the shoulders 
and forcibly turned him round. “Look beyond there! A 
mile or two of road and by-road, and a bit of metalled high¬ 
way, and Brabycott village, and Brabycott House, and the 
Park and the Home farm and the rest . . . And seventy 
thousands pounds in the Bank—or that was in the Bank 
a few years ago. Mine, mine—lawfully mine! and the 
loss of a bit of paper has left me as bare as a new-hatched 
thrush, and fattened the carrion-crows. See me!” He 
struck his hollowish chest, repeating a favourite action; 
conscious, cheaply theatrical—and coughed, and went cough¬ 
ing on: “See me as I stand before you—and think what 
Money might have made of me. Look at your mother in 
her worn old gown and her bonnet that the rats might nest 
j n — anc i as k yourself whether Money would have made any 
difference in her? And take a squint at yourself, by the 
way, in your mother’s cracked old looking-glass, and think 
what Money might make of you!” 

“I wouldn’ say No! to money,” blurted out Stephen 
clumsily, “as were come by decent an’ Christian-like. But 
supposin’ ’twasn’t, I would!” 

He turned paler as he encountered Braby’s eyes. They 
reminded him of a viper’s. His voice had a venomous hiss 
in it, that bore out that resemblance to the snake. 

“We’ll go in and eat our dinner. That was ‘come by 
decent and Christian-like.’ The reason—very possibly— 
that there won’t be enough for one.” 

He made it just enough for one. For the others there 
were potatoes. 

“Nourishing things for women and boys,” said Braby, 
“with plenty of bread.” 

All through the meal he kept up his new role of kind 
and indulgent father, with lapses into the earlier part of 
ill-used gentleman. And when it was finished, he sat by 
the hearth, making, with hair-wire and pliers, neat sliding 
loops that his wife and son knew well were poacher’s snares. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 197 

23 

At twelve o’clock Stephen was getting into the Church¬ 
yard. He had accomplished the feat of leaving the house 
without waking his mother up. He had slewed his guilty 
eye towards the bed where she lay profoundly sleeping, 
with one massive arm, buried in her streaming curls, hang¬ 
ing laxly over the edge of the mattress, and the other thrown 
across her face, to ward the candle from her eyes. 

And Braby sitting up beside her with the flaring dip 
at his elbow, smoking and spitting, and conning some soiled 
papers written in a clerkly hand, had looked over these, and 
nodded, and the door had shut quietly—and Stephen was 
out in the February night. 

Rain had fallen steadily all day long, but had stopped 
and the stars were shining. The Dog glowed angry crim¬ 
son over the tops of the damson and apple-trees of the little 
patch of orchard on the south side of the house. The mass 
of the trees blocked out the twinkling midnight lights of 
London. And to Stephen’s right, the wide expanse of the 
wheatacres lay veiled in darkness, only broken by the slim 
black outlines of a row of sapling oaks. 

A great moony splendour Stephen could not name 
burned with strange iridescent fire over the distant woods 
of Brabycott. Charles’s Wain ruled the upper middle sky, 
Aldebaran lamped low towards the West. A little 
whimpering, chilly wind was running round and round the 
house as though it had lost its quarter. Stephen went 
to the woodshed and found the little hand-hoe where he 
had placed it in readiness behind the door. He buttoned 
the tool with some difficulty inside his old woollen Cardigan. 
Then he went out of the garden without clicking the latch 
of the gate. That sound had always waked his mother 
before his father’s homecoming. He had sometimes won¬ 
dered why this should be, but he comprehended now. 

He crossed the road, and jumped the Tolley Brook, 
which the recent rains had swollen. 

To get over the fence into the grazing glebe was ex¬ 
tremely easy. The cows would be gathered at the north 
end of the field, with their rumps turned towards the hedge. 


198 The Pipers of the Market Place 

But if any cow with an original bent of mind, and a dislike 
of conventionality, happened to be lying in the middle of the 
field, one might tumble over her in the dark. 

This did not happen. The western boundary of the field 
was a wall of old-world masonry. Stephen set his palms 
on its rounded top, and vaulted into the road. A frightful 
yowl froze his blood and a prolonged ‘fuff!’ assured him 
that he had jumped—or nearly so—upon some prowling 
cat. . . . 

The southing moon loomed out from behind a heavy 
bank of clouds over London. And the great east window 
of Tolleymead Church, where the old stained glass was 
left in patches, loomed out of the dark beyond the church¬ 
yard wall in rather a ghostly way. The flagged path that 
led from the Rector’s private gate in the south wall to the 
Vestry shone in the moonlight like a great pale snake crawl¬ 
ing across the grass. 

A wreath of' immortelles on a recent grave,—the new 
tombstone and kerbing of another,—stood out in the blue- 
white radiance, backed by black funereal yews. Stephen 
touched a bit of cold iron which he carried in his right-hand 
pocket, and hoisting himself to the summit of the wall, 
got down on the Churchyard side. 

The path led straight to the Vestry door and then under 
the row of windows, small and filled in with modern 
glass, that were on the Church’s south side. You turned 
the corner, and there was the west door and beyond the 
square bulk of the Tower, with a separate door in the 
south side, facing you as you stood. 

The door gave access to the cold echoing place, where 
between the overhead cross-beams the ropes from the 
Tower belfry hung down to the ringers’ floor. Wheel¬ 
wright Rumbold kept the great iron key, and stayed behind 
on practice-nights, to lay the used ropes tidily, and loop 
them out of reach of the rats. 

Rumbold did not believe in ghosts. The utterances of 
which he had delivered himself, on the subject of Marching 
Corpses, had not faded from Stephen’s mind. 

Aiid when he had been questioned on the other prob- 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 199 

ability of Dead folks turning in their coffins, he had said 
he put no faith in that; nor yet he never would. 

Strong in his faith in Rumbold, and gripping his bit of 
cold iron, Stephen passed the door of the belfry and soon 
stood under the Liar’s Stone. 

It was on the north side of the West Tower, the side 
the Liar had chosen. The moonlight, striking from the 
southward, left the Tower’s north side all black. Stephen 
braced himself for the ordeal, and produced a match from 
his pocket. Holding his breath, and clutching his tabs- 
manic bit of cold iron, he leaned forwards and struck the 
lucifer on the surface of the Liar’s Stone. 

The stone being damp from recent rain, the match sput¬ 
tered and expired. Stephen fumbled for another and struck 
it, and the head broke off and fell. It flickered for an in¬ 
stant near Stephen’s boot—and he saw that he stood beside 
a gravestone. The match-flame gave one glimpse of the 
epitaph upon the stone, before it fizzled and died. 

Sacred to the Memory of 
Anna Maria Braby 
of Brabycott, 

Who Departed This Life 
In the Hope of an Everlasting Crown, 

August nth, 1857, 

Aged 42. 

He had never before stopped to scan the stone, which 
had no railing round it, and the words upon the rain- 
blobbed surface came with the effect of a surprise. 

Here she lay, the thick-set, black-eyed, sallow-com- 
plexioned youngish woman, who had been the favourite 
and confidante of that grim old father of hers. She had 
listened to his stories of the Slave Trade between Guinea 
and the West Indies, and wished that she had been a man, 
and a Slaver too, perhaps. 

Twenty feet distant from Miss Ann’s gravestone, a plain 
slab of local granite,—daylight would have shown the 
Braby vault, within a railing rusted with neglect. The 
place of sepulture was surmounted by a square unwieldy 


200 The Pipers of the Market Place 

monument of damp-streaked yellowish marble carved with 
garlands and cherubs’ heads. One side was occupied by 
a pretentious coat-of-arms, supported by two fish-tailed 
sirens. On the other side was an inscription which Stephen 
had once painfully spelt out: 

Here Rest the Earthly Remains of 
George Thomasson Braby 
Of Brabycott, 

Merchant and Master-Mariner, 

Aged 62. 

A Faithful Husband, A Devoted Father And 
A Devout Christian He 
Exemplified in his Private & Publick Life 
The teachings of Holy Scripture. And 
Departed this Life November 1st, 1817 
In the Sure & Certain Hope of 
Life Eternall. 


Also Are Here Interred 
The Remains of 
Harriott Wilhelmina, 
Aged 38, Died June 20th, 1833, 
Daughter-in-Law of the Above 
And Wife Of 


Geoffrey Thomasson Braby 
Of Braby cott. 


Here Also Rests the Body of 
Geoffrey Thomasson Braby 
Of Braby cott, 

Aged 73, 

Who Departed This Life 
August 14th, 1855. 

III. Cor. VIII. Phil. III. XVII. V. Thess. XXII 
This Inscription Has Been Placed Here 
By His Sorrowing Daughter 
Anna Maria Braby 
Of Brabycott. 




How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 201 

The three-decked inscription so painfully spelt out had 
faded from Stephen’s memory. Yet disconnected lines 
of it flickered up under the stimulus of fear. 

For he was afraid, sickeningly afraid. The Liar with his 
blazing punch-bowl, the Turning Yew near the lych-gate, 
paled and diminished to common bugaboos in the glare 
of this grislier dread. 

The squat sour woman with the beady eyes, who 
mouldered under the gravestone, would have had no terrors 
for her nephew in the ordinary way. But now she was 
worse than the Turning Yew and more horrible than the 
Liar because of her connection with those two old men 
boxed up in the Braby vault: 

George Thomasson Braby of evil fame, the old slave¬ 
trading Captain; and Geoffrey his son, the supercargo’s 
clerk who had burned the shipload of slaves. 

“Black men an’ women an’ childern too. Packed like 
herrin’s in a barrel. . . . An’ th’ Sun sank down, an’ it wer’ 
Night, but th’ Night wer’ as light as th’ day. Wi’ th’ light 
o’ the blazing Slave-ship as Braby’s son had set Fire 
to. . . . Twelve hundred souls. . . . An’ Braby an’ his 
son played cards by th’ light o’ th’ Fire.” 

Were they sitting up in their coffins now, chuckling 
and grinning at each other, the hoary murderer of sixty- 
two and the son who had died at seventy-three ? . . . With 
streams of icy water trickling down his back, and hair 
that bristled on his scalp, Stephen glanced in the direction 
of the monument. It could not have been quite one o’clock, 
but the blackness seemed tinged with grey. He could make 
out the perpendicular lines of the rusted iron railings and 
the urn-topped block of masonry looming behind the iron¬ 
work. 

Did a pale phosphorescent glimmer crawl over the sur¬ 
face of the marble? . . . What was that rasping, scratch¬ 
ing sound, and that thudding on the sodden turf? 

Something was moving near the Braby vault. Old George 
and Old Geoffrey were coming! . . . Stephen yelled, and 
took to his heels, leaping over graves and gravestones, 
bruising his shins among upright slabs, charging bushes 
that gave way beneath his weight. . . . 


202 The Pipers of the Market Place 

And the Something was hard upon his heels. He heard 
it thudding behind him, and, prodded to desperate energy 
by fear, sped blindly through the dark. Once his iron- 
nailed heel crashed through the glass enclosing a wreath 
of china flowers. He seemed sinking into fathomless 
depths!—but he wrenched himself free and fled on. . . . 

Now the great spreading bulk of the ancient Yew reared 
blackly up before him, lifting to the sky the foliaged 
boughs that sprang from its great-girthed bole. Old when 
men lopped those towering boughs to make longbows for 
the archers of Agincourt,—the Tolleymead Yew may 
have furnished shafts for the arrows of Richard’s Cru¬ 
sades. 

The wren and the nightingale, the grey wagtail and the 
white and tawny owls, lived and bred in it season after 
season. Possibly the yew owed its green old age, and 
the birds their sweet security, to the ugly village legend 
that flourished in its shade, like the toadstools that sprouted 
from its bark. 

Now Stephen, with wild staring eyes, and the Brabys 
following behind him, plunged into the thick black shadow 
of the Yew and out on the other side. Now the flint-built, 
brick-topped wall of the churchyard rose before him and 
he leaped at it. . . . He was over, and out again and 
running up the road. North, towards the Tolley Hall 
Woods. 

When Tolleymead Church clock struck the quarter to 
one, he was kneeling by the potato-clamp, frantically delving 
with the little hand-hoe in the indicated spot. Now he 
had hold of the hidden sack. It was uncommon heavy, 
and the objects inside were surely not potatoes. He undid 
the string about the neck and slipped in an exploring 
hand. . . . 

“Birds!” . . . said Stephen to himself, and as though 
in confirmation, a cock-pheasant crowed in the covert that 
ran beside the field. So the mystery of the shortened shot¬ 
gun, and the puzzle of divers nets and snares that Stephen 
had found hidden in the woodshed, were, thenceforth to 
the understanding of Braby’s son, problems made clear 
and plain. 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 203 

Haybitt’s house, with its yard and sheds behind, instead 
of the customary garden, stood on the edge of the Goose 
Green, a little above ‘The Pure Drop.’ When Stephen, 
panting and breathless now,—reached the rearward wall 
of the premises, there was no man visible to the naked 
eye, and he gave a sigh of relief. 

Then as he turned to lower the sack, by easing it against 
the wall behind him, he heard boot-toes scraping against 
the bricks on the other side, and a whisper above the level 
of his head: 

“Peas?” said the presumable owner of the scraping 
boots in a thickish lisping whisper, and the shaggy sconce 
of Haybitt’s elder son rose up above the level of the wall. 

“Beans!” said Stephen, sickening at the thing he had 
been flattered into doing. . . . The voice spoke again as 
the lanky frame that Stephen had pounded on Sunday 
followed its owner’s frowsy head over the by-way-of- 
butcher’s back-wall. 

“Gi’ us a hoist wi’ that there sack,” said the frowsy 
one authoritatively. “And don’t yer go hoam by the road¬ 
way, ’cos the bobby be on his beat. Joe Pounds he passes 
to’rds the Station Works ’bout this time, an’ comes back 
in ten minutes. Cross the corner o’ th’ glebe, an’ nip over 
th’ fence when Pounds be safe out o’ the way.” 

Stephen grunted, suppressing his wrath, and the frowsy 
one, bidding him stand by the sack, and hoist when he 
should feel a haul, climbed back over the wall chuckling. 
Then the sack began to move, and Stephen, hoisting with 
a vengeance, heard it fall with a thud on the other side, 
and knew by the smothered curses of his enemy that some 
portion of young Haybitt’s anatomy had intervened be¬ 
tween its weight and the ground. 

He got back over the fence of the glebe-field as a fine 
thin rain was falling, and dropped down in the dank wet 
grasses to wait until the solitary policeman, who divided 
his services between the hamlet of Brabycott and Tolley- 
mead village, returned along the Tolley Brook Road. When 
the clumping boots of Constable Pounds had passed, and 
their sound could no longer be distinguished, he stumbled 
to his feet again, and rubbed his sleepy eyes. 


204 The Pipers of the Market Place 

There was a yellow streak of false dawn in the distance 
over Romney Marshes, and by its light the terrors of the 
previous hours shrank small. He scorned the sucksop who 
had scudded like a hare from a tomb with two dead old 
men in it, and an imaginary bugaboo that had chased him 
in the dark. 

“Hwoof!” said a cow indignantly, as Stephen tripped 
and sprawled over her. Her wet hairy body heaved up 
stern first, and he slid from her hindquarters towards her 
horns. Then her fore part was hoisted with another grunt, 
and he slithered towards her rump again, vainly clutching 
with numbed blue hands for something by which to hold. 

Finally, with hoisted tail, the cow broke into a gallop, 
and vanished into the drab-grey mist in a cloud of clover¬ 
smelling steam. Stephen, left sitting in the middle of the 
wet field, picked himself up and plodded homewards, savage 
and chilly and weary,—a thoroughly wretched boy. 

The stars were paling towards dawn as he got out over 
the fence of the glebe-field. He had forgotten that the 
Tolley Brook lay between the field and the high-road. He 
had reached the brink of the deep hollow in which it lay, 
before its voice came out of the darkness. He jumped it 
high above the crossing-place, and was back on the Tolley 
Brook Road. 

The cottage rose before him, as he stumbled up the cart¬ 
way. The sweet smell of burning apple-wood warned him 
that his mother was astir. A thin blue column of vapour 
wreathed up from the single slate-topped chimney. An 
owl sat on the ridge-pole of the dripping thatch, and called 
mellowly to another in the orchard, that sent back a soft 
gurgling note from somewhere amongst the trees. A fox 
barked, some distance off, and from the coppice at the 
bottom of the garden came the thin, insistent, piercing 
scream that is the love-call of the vixen to her mate. 

“Ee-yah, ee-yah — ee-yah, ee-yah!” 

It was February and the foxes were breeding. Two 
slim four-legged bushy-tailed shadows had played all night 
round the oak-tree stump. They had gambolled amongst 
the cabbages, and all over the orchard, to the accompani¬ 
ment of that yapping squeal: 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 205 

“Ee-yah, ee-yah, ee-yah!” 

As the boy touched the latch of the gate, the thin wild 
voice was silent. As his lagging footsteps reached the 
cottage door, it was opened by his mother’s hand. A little 
fire crackled between the hobs of the range. There was no 
other light in the living-room, on the threshold of which 
Malvina stood with a stern and awful face. 

Her feet were bare, and the clean coarse linen of her old- 
fashioned nightgown was hidden by a well-worn Indian 
shawl, that partly covered her head. 

Stephen was well acquainted with the old Indian shawl. 
It had covered his cradle in babyhood, and wrapped in 
its warm, soft, ample folds he had been carried afield by 
his mother. When he had been sick it had covered his 
bed; he had played tents under its outspread richness. It 
might have fetched ten guineas even now, if an expert had 
come that way. ... 

Her dead old mistress had given the shawl to dead old 
Susan Parmint. Seen by the daylight, it was old and 
frayed, and darned with common mends. But its regal 
purples and rusty-reds and rich border of embroidered 
palm-leaves might have draped the mourning Demeter as 
she sought for her ravished child. 

Such a peplum might have cloaked the goddess as she 
sat by the fountain of Eleusis, and covered her from head 
to foot as she entered the palace of the King. And when 
she bent her imperial brows in rebuke of the son of Keleos, 
the young Demophoon may have felt as small as Stephen 

was feeling now. , 

“Go to yo’r bed. Take this wi’ yo. What s to say 

I’ll say i’ th’ mornm’ . . . 

A slice of bread and a steaming mug were thrust into 
his sodden hands. He stumbled up the ladder as a peevish 
voice called from the bed to Malvina, and as he threw a re¬ 
sentful glance at the figure under the bed-coverings, he 
caught the flash of a sharp black eye and heard a stifled 

“Shut the door. There’s a damned draught,” said 
Braby, “and come back to bed with you! ... Do you 


206 The Pipers of the Market Place 

think I want you clinking about when it isn’t a quarter to 
three!” 

Malvina glanced between the lowered blind and the 
jamb of the southward window, ere she obeyed the rudely- 
given command. The wantoning foxes were silent, and 
the owl had flown back to his partner. The crinkled Savoys 
and red cabbages stood in rows, like weary rain-drenched 
soldiers, overtopped by the scraggy, naked stems of the 
Brussels sprouts that were past. 

The man Mackilliveray stood upon the bank amongst 
the hazel-stools and birches of the coppice. The slight 
noise she had made in touching the blind must have reached 
him, for instantly he was gone. . . . And if the wrath 
that burned in her blood could have leaped from her with 
the force of lightning, the man who had waited by the 
cowyard gate would have troubled her no more. 

She said nothing to Stephen when the morning came, 
and he crept down the ladder from the garret. She was 
silent then, and silent still as the days went on and on. 
Yet there were many nights when a scowling boy went 
out to do Braby’s errands. She saw him go, and saw him 
return, and still she held her tongue. 

Mackilliveray followed her no more; and village tongues 
were silent. But one morning the postman rapped at the 
door. He had a letter for her. A soiled envelope, with 
the stamp stuck crookedly in the middle, and her name 
crookedly written underneath the stamp. 

There was a pheasant’s feather inside the envelope, 
within a scrawled half-sheet of paper. The paper bore 
a message that turned her cold, though she had known 
before. . . . 


“Narbor. 

this Be to tel yu as The Young Pup be 
folerin in the OwD Dogs Traises. 

Luk Owt fur troubel 

from A Trew Friend.” 


She had no need to guess who the true friend was who 


How Stephen Fell in Love with a Rose 207 

had written the anonymous letter. As the foul thing flared 
and shrivelled in her fire, she said: 

“Mackilliveray!” 

And she sensed a slow, dogged purpose in this man, 
working steadily towards her: moved by no pity, touched 
by no respect, intent on the attainment of its end. 

















Booh the Third: 

HOW STEPHEN ROBBED A HOTHOUSE AND FORTUNE 
TURNED HER WHEEL 


* 


Book the Third: how Stephen robbed a 

HOTHOUSE AND FORTUNE TURNED HER 
WHEEL 


I 

S PRING advanced and the drone of the steam-thrasher 
was borne with winged thistledown on the winds 
that passed over Tolley Hall Farmyard. Pale wind¬ 
flowers hovered over the dead leaves in the coppice at 
the bottom of Malvina’s little garden, and the daffodils 
that Shakespeare loved, starred the grass of the meadows 
and fields. The blackthorn bloomed and the bird-cherry, 
and the apricot, peach and damson, and water-fennel and 
cow-parsnip and hemlock thrust rankly through the 
weathered weeds on the sides of the wheatacres drain. 

As Haybitt’s clients lost appetite for close-time par¬ 
tridges and pheasants, the bags that Stephen was sent to 
retrieve from near and distant hiding-places only consisted 
of ground-game that had been netted or snared. Many 
fat hares and rabbits were eaten at the. cottage by the 
wheatacres; but though Malvina cooked their flesh, burning 
bones and offal with her rubbish, she made her own meal 
of bread and cheese, or bread if cheese there was none. 

Stephen continued to help with the sheep, and worked 
with Pover on the ploughlands, faithfully bringing his 
mother home his earnings week by week. 

And yet, though she would not have owned it, there 
was division between them. When he picked the first wild 
violets and as always brought them home for her, he put 
them in an egg-cupful of water, on a shelf beside her chair. 
Of old he would have laid them on her lap and earned one 
of her rare kisses. Now, although she thanked him for 
the gift, he had no kiss in return. 

He silently resented what he felt to be unfairness. Was 
it to please himself or her that he did the things he loathed? 
But he went on seeking and finding, and fetching and carry- 
211 


212 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

ing for his father, and many a night when he should have 
been abed, was many miles from home. . . . 

He acquired at this time a sleepy air, owing to these 
nocturnal outings, and the brain under his yellow curls 
acquired knowledge of a curious sort. Such wisdom as 
is necessary for the poacher who would make a profit out 
of poaching, and who would not be suspected and captured 
by the minions of the Law. 

Stephen knew the hours of the keepers’ patrols of byways 
and footpaths and side-tracks. He was certain of the 
points where the keepers’ men would be posted when pre¬ 
serves were to be watched. He could name you the par¬ 
ticular cross-ways and lanes where the Sergeant from 
Wheatstone Police Station or the mounted Superin¬ 
tendent from High Marnet met the local constables on 
their beat o’ nights, and heard what they had to say. 

Strange places Braby chose in which to conceal the loot 
of his raidings of country gentlemen’s game coverts and 
farmers’ rabbit-warrens. The chimneys of empty cot¬ 
tages, the hedgerow side of field dungheaps, the heaps of 
metal left by the roadside, were used to hide his bags. 

A rusty chain, hooked over a staple in the side of a 
well or stone-pit, when hauled on, would come scooping 
up with the plunder made fast to the end. Or the sack 
would be hidden in a mangold-clamp. Or an end of the 
rope that tied it would stick innocently up in the middle 
of a patch of wet or sandy ground. 

Brabycott coverts were empty now, save for stray birds 
that bred there. But there were hares and rabbits in plenty 
on the land. Strangely enough, Stephen thought, he was 
never sent to Brabycott. He waited for the word to go, 
but he waited, as yet, in vain. 

He went nutting and blackberrying with young Hay- 
bitt in these days, and a dozen other hulking fellows, and 
robbed orchards on the sly, and went to fairs with them. 
They played football and cricket on Tolleymead Green on 
half-days and holidays. On Sundays they foregathered 
in the fields, smoked make-believe cigars of elm-root, and 
cheap tobacco in halfpenny clays, and pretended to be men. 

Generally they gambled: played shove-halfpenny and all- 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 213 


fours, and pitch-and-toss for coppers. Often silver coins 
would be mixed with the coppers on the ground. For the 
rest—Stephen was not ignorant of vice, but something kept 
him untainted. He loathed lewdness and filthy jests as he 
loathed the taste of drink. 

But there was rebellion in the rich red blood that coursed 
through his strong young body. He longed to fill the 
emptiness of his life with splendid things. To learn, to 
know, to have mastery of the crafts that belong by right 
to manhood. To be and do, and build up life with strong, 
capable hands. . . . 

A winged creature seemed pent within him, that some¬ 
times brooded in silence, and at other times dashed itself 
madly against the bars of its cage. The rough pleasures 
he shared with his companions would dull or stifle these 
longings, though in a little while he felt them aching and 
stinging again. 

A thing happened to him once that might have killed 
his winged guest for ever. He had been sent at midnight 
to a distant public-house. A lonely house at cross-roads 
with a larch-spinney behind it, and when he got there at 
midnight, light was showing through the shutter-chinks. 

He knocked at the rearward door of the place and the 
noisy clamour of voices and the clinking of pots and glasses 
ceased, and the flaring lights went out. . . . Then he gave 
a signal he had been taught, and the lights were uncovered 
or re-kindled, and the roaring and clinking and roystering 
went on as though they had never stopped. 

The door was unbarred by a dark-haired girl who carried 
a flaring candle, and wore a brooch that glittered in the lace 
about her neck. She relieved Stephen of his load and 
offered him a glass of liquor and seemed genuinely wounded 
when the offer was refused. 

“Wait a minute, then,” she said to the boy. “I’ve got 
something you’ll not say ‘No’ to!” She disappeared and 
came back, and giggled as she pushed something against 
Stephen’s cheek. 

It was velvety soft and firm and cool, and gave forth 
an exquisite fruity fragrance. He made an incoherent 
sound of surprise, and took it eagerly from her hand. 


214 The Pipers of the Market Place 

It was a nectarine, glowing crimson and gold in the 
mingled moonlight and candle-light. The gift of some 
under-gardener, perhaps, who fancied the dark-browed 
girl. 

“ Twas given to me for myself,” said the girl, smiling 
coquettishly at Stephen. 

Her brown eyes shone like the stones of her brooch, and 
her cheeks were as red as the fruit. 

Daylight would have shown the colour of her cheeks to 
be as false as her tawdry jewels, and revealed traces of 
a reckless life in her poor young brazen face. But here 
in the moonlight and candle-light she was pretty, very 
pretty. Stephen looked at her thinking this, and she looked 
back at him. 

“Are your eyes blue by daylight ?” she breathed, and 
softly touched his forehead with a hand blackened by the 
beer-pulls, and decked with cheap brass rings. 

“Yes,” whispered Stephen, trembling. 

“Come and show me them to-morrow!” said the girly 
pouting her reddened lips temptingly. 

“Nay, I’ve work to do,” he answered, and she screamed 
out an ugly word at him, and banged the door, and left 
him there with the nectarine in his hand. 

He laid it down on a window-sill and went home heavily. 
His was the dull, stultifying life, that sharpens the lower 
faculties of the body at the expense of the higher, and 
plucks the wings of the soul. If ever Stephen thought of 
Lou Buckley now, it was rarely—very rarely. And the 
voices of the Market only called him now and then. 

But one morning towards the middle of May, when 
the young green wheat was springing, and Tom Pover, 
with Stephen and some other lads, hand-hoed and weeded 
the drills, the boy, lying under a crab-apple tree in the 
hedge to eat his bread and bacon, turned over on his back 
and looked up at the blue sky, through the clusters of 
snowy bloom. 

And the myriads of little flower-faces were sorry for 
Stephen Braby, who through no fault of his own had 
strayed from the paths that flowers approve. 

“What must th’ Market look like now, when all th* 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 215 


Spring flowers be bloomin’? What wouldn’ I give to see 
it?” he asked of his aching heart. 

He slouched home along the field-way when the rough 
day’s work was over, and went to his attic fixed in mind 
not to go out that night. He heard Braby cross the room 
below, past the hour that should have found him stirring. 
His voice called from the bottom of the ladder. Stephen 
shuddered and lay still. 

“So you’ve turned sulky?” said the hateful voice. 

Still Stephen made no answer. To Malvina, wakeful 
in the bed below, came the terror that he might be ill. She 
rose up to go to him, as Braby set a foot on the ladder. 

“This is (hie) my affair,” said her lord and master 
thickly. “You will leave me (hie), Mrs. Braby, to deal 
myself with my son. You damned young loafer, rouse up 
there! Is this the time to be hogging?” 

The speaker set an unsteady foot on one of the lower 
rungs. In his night-attire, with rumpled hair, the light 
of the flaring candle showed the misunderstood, ill-used 
gentleman in one of his ugliest moods. 

“Wake up, you-” He scattered some flowers of 

speech metaphorically on the head of Stephen and, brandish¬ 
ing the dripping candlestick, essayed to mount another 
rung. . . . 

Then he glanced above—to see a white set face framed 
in the darkness of the attic, and catch the gleam of a naked 
arm brandishing a broken jug. . . . 

There was something terrible in the fixed blue eyes and 
that mute attitude of defiance. The drunkard’s nerve gave 
way at the sight, and he floundered down upon the floor. 
To Malvina, who hurried to his aid, he shrieked that the 
young hound up there had raised his hand to his father! 
and, getting no answer from her frozen lips, reviled her 
for a heartless wife. 

She and the boy were in league, he vowed. He went 
in danger from them! He would have protection from the 
Law. Ay, he would call in the Police. Then his mood 
softened into tears. He sought consolation at the cupboard, 
and hiccoughed, with his bottle at his dribbling mouth, that 
it was his only friend. 



216 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Such a man, such a husband, such a father he had been, 
and because of this he was outcast; slandered, reviled and 
hated; tricked, maltreated and robbed. Now his wife and 
son, for whose sakes he had borne outrages and humilia¬ 
tions, turned from the ill-used gentleman. ... It was the 
last straw! 

And drivelling and maundering thus, the martyr rolled 
under the table. Malvina could not lift him now; she was 
not as able as she had been. But she called to Stephen to 
come down. He silently obeyed her, and they laid the 
sleeping drunkard in his bed and covered his shamefulness. 

Not a word, barely a look, was exchanged between them 
as they did this. The boy slunk up to his garret lair and 
the woman prepared to watch. But both mother and son 
knew very well that this hastened the hour of parting. Not 
much longer might a single roof shelter Wilfrid Braby and 
his son. 

Yet the tyrant, when he wakened from his maudlin 
sleep, seemed to have forgotten what had happened. He 
had not, but that look in the set young face had cowed 
the brute in him. He told himself to be careful in dealing 
with the boy for the future. A young devil who was grow¬ 
ing overhand, and knew so much too much. . . . 

Stephen came home early on the Saturday with bad 
news to tell his mother. He had been dismissed by his 
employer with no promise of re-engagement later on. The 
farmer had had a letter written by an anonymous well- 
wisher. Penned in an illiterate, sprawling hand and freely 
spattered with ink, it informed him that his ploughboy was 
‘thick with a Potchin Gang in the Nayborhud, and Wun 
of Thease Fine dais wold Find him Pinshed by the polis.” 

The farmer, a rough but kindly man, had grumbled over 
the letter, but later consultation with his wife had sealed 
his ploughboy’s fate. He called Stephen up to him in the 
yard, and told him bluntly of the charges. 

“Do you do such things or don’t you ?” he asked. “Are 
these lies, or are they not ?” 

“True, sir,” said Stephen squarely. 

“You young scoundrel!-” blustered the farmer. 

But talking didn’t cure such ways. He paid Stephen and 



How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 217 


turned him off. And the look in the brave blue eyes that 
met his own made it hard to mete out justice. However, 
he consoled himself. The boy had got to go. 

The Tolleymead Railway Station was growing towards 
completion. The New Branch Line came nearer with 
the end of every day. Part of the southward boundary- 
hedge of the wheatacres would be levelled in the week that 
followed, and the first cut made in the soil he loved by the 
mattocks of the digging-gang. 

He would have to sack two boys or a man, and to do 
the former was wisest. Besides, the young dog had been 
poaching—he had owned to it blunt enough! But he thrust 
an extra florin in Stephen’s palm, and bade him keep 
straight for the future. 

“I will, sir,” said Stephen simply, and touching his cap, 
he went home. 


2 

He walked slowly under his burden of care. He had 
got to tell his mother. She had returned earlier from 
work, and was hanging out some new-washed clothes. On 
the cart-track that ran by the garden-fence was drawn up 
a hawker’s barrow. Attached to the barrow was a pony 
whom Stephen recognized as an acquaintance. And the 
square-built, stocky fellow in the sleeved plush waistcoat 
and fur cap, who leaned against the fence smoking, was 
none other than B. Faggis, of Lower ’Olloway. 

“So here’s the identical Young Shaver as we have been 
discoursing,” said Mr. Faggis, smiling all over his square 
red face, as he shook Stephen by the hand. “As my Missus 
took such a shine to, and have arsked arter perpetooal, an’ 
nothing would do her but a promise as wot I’d look ’im 
up. Being without said Missus, who’s a-looking arter the 
shop at Lower ’Olloway—and my young man stopping at 
Barnet, to pack up a genooine Antigreek as—such know¬ 
ings being in my partic’ler Line—I’d heard were to be 
Picked Up there!—I’ve room in the Barrer for a Passenger, 
an’ havin’ bis’ness with a Bloke at Brabycott—suppose you 
comes along o’ me an’ keeps a eye on the Prad ?” 


218 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Malvina had started at the reference to Brabycott and 
looked anxiously at Stephen. He was silent and down¬ 
cast, and shunned her glance, and her heart was sore for her 
boy. 

“Brabycott House being shut up, there won’t be no 
Plum Cake nor Pork wine for us,” continued Mr. Faggis, 
“but a gliff at the Gardens the Shaver might git while I 
does my Bis’ness with the Bloke. If so be as said Shaver 
is willin’ an’ his mother is agreeable to the notion. Me bein’ 
responsible as an ’ouse’older, for his not gittin’ Pinched by 
the Police.” 

The unfortunately applicable nature of the jest deprived 
Stephen of the power of responding. He turned pale, and 
stood twisting his ragged cap, without a word to say. 

“Go with th’ gentleman, my dear,” said Malvina, sud¬ 
denly melting, and the radiance that broke over the dour 
young face was her reward for the concession that hurt. 

So it came to pass that in company with B. Faggis and 
the pony Smiler Stephen rattled over the mile or so of road 
and by-road and newly-metalled highway that divided the 
little old cottage that stood on the edge of the wheatacres, 
from the House where Wilfrid Braby had first seen the 
light of day. 


3 

There had been much rain in the beginning of the month, 
and the voice of the Tolley Brook—as it ran to swell the 
Brent River, and take a look at the Hendon Reservoir, and 
tumble into the Thames at Brentford, as Stephen loved to 
picture it doing—was louder than usual. The further bank, 
that climbed to the path called The Quaker’s Walk by old 
people, was starry with primroses, and their delicate scent 
came to Stephen on the westerly breeze. 

At the top of the Tolley Brook Road was Cott Lane, 
branching east to the Tolley Hall Dairy Farm, and west 
past the rear lodge of Tolley Hall Park to the hamlet of 
Brabycott. A pleasant lane to drive along this fine after¬ 
noon in the month of May, with the hedges white with 
hawthorn, and the chestnuts all abloom. With the larks 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 219 


mere singing specks on the blue sky and the thrushes and 
blackbirds piping, and the rooks in the elms of Tolley 
Hall, brooding on their last year’s nests, or noisily building 
new. 

Leaving Tolley Hall and its rooks behind, they came, 
as the lane grew wider, to a level stretch with cropped 
hedges, and ploughlands upon either side. Brabycott land, 
as Stephen knew, was well under cultivation. Far from 
exhibiting any signs of neglect during the previous years. 

The whitewashed cottage of Joseph Pounds, the con¬ 
stable of S. Division, who divided his attention between 
Brabycott and the larger area of Tolleymead, was here, 
on the right-hand side of the lane. And there was Joe in 
his shirt-sleeves, digging in his neat front garden as though 
such beings as poachers did not exist in those parts. 

Joe looked up and nodded to Stephen, who reddened as 
he touched his cap to him, and exchanged a greeting with 
Faggis as Smiler rattled them by. And then they were in 
Brabycott, a little clean churchless hamlet, no bigger than 
the middle slice out of an ordinary village, consisting of a 
short double row of whitewashed, thatched cottages, a Post 
Office, a chandler’s, a baker’s and an old-fashioned post¬ 
ing-house. 

It had a deserted coach-yard at the side, and was roomy 
and heavy-beamed and gabled, and displayed a large pre¬ 
tentious sign of comparatively modern date, displaying an 
heraldic coat showing the head of a Black Man, supported 
by two fish-tailed mermaids, over the legend announcing 
it to be ‘The Braby Arms.’ 

Here Faggis pulled up the willing prad, and whistled 
out the potman, an old-young man with a broken nose, 
who welcomed him cordially; and entrusting the function¬ 
ary with a flat green bottle to be filled with the oldest 
Stingo, ordered a pint of half-and-half to ‘lay the dust/ 
as he said. 

“ ’Ave a drain, Shaver!” he pleasantly proposed, on the 
production of the frothing pewter, and offered it to Stephen, 
who drew back, shaking his head. 

“Please no, sir!” 

“Don’t be shy of it, Shaver,” advised B. Faggis. “What- 


220 The Pipers of the Market Place 

ever ’ud become o’ the British working-man without his 
drop o’ beer? And what do my Missus say to me—know¬ 
ing me never overtook by it?—‘Faggis, go along,’ she spy, 
‘and git your drain this minute, as are no good com’ny 
without it, being accustomed-like!’ Them are the words of 
that Pearl o’ Price, and Jewel in the Regalier of England, 
and no objection to a drop herself—the day’s work bein’ 
dooly done. What have you got to say to that?” 

“I—I can’t abide th’ smell of it!” faltered Stephen, 
shrinking from the whiff of the bubbles on the pewter-rim. 

“Then strike me pink if you know wot’s good!” ob¬ 
served Faggis, draining the pewter and returning the emp¬ 
tied vessel to the shirt-sleeved man of pots. 

“What’s this? ... Who doesn’t know what’s good? 

. . . You’re here before your time, Faggis! Now, in 
the Devil’s name, whose Boy have you got with you 
there? . . .” 

The loud, coarse, bullying voice that broke in, belonged, 
Stephen knew, to Grower Grundall. He came, a big, red¬ 
faced, gross-bodied man, but hard of flesh, not flabby— 
driving a high-stepping raw-boned mare in a high-wheeled 
farmer’s gig. Pulling up the mare, which was trotting very 
hard, so close behind the hawker that her spread fore¬ 
feet slid scrapingly under the tailboard of the barrow, and 
her yellow teeth were within an inch or two of Stephen’s 
wincing ear. 

“Woa, you brute! . . . Come back here! . . . What! 
. . . You will have it, will you? ...” A vicious slash 
of the Grower’s whip accompanied each exhortation, as he 
wrenched at the bit, and the big mare backed, and stood 
champing her foam. “Woa, you blasted Hellcat, woa!” 
He wrenched at the powerful bit again, and the mare, 
striking the flinty road so fiercely with a fore-hoof that 
the sparks flew, stood still, quivering in every limb. 

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Grundall, sir!” The shirt¬ 
sleeved potman of the ‘Braby Arms’ scraped a foot and 
touched the lock upon his forehead. “But if you’d be 
pleased to let me loose a link or so of her curb-chain,— 
which is galling of her cruel—you’d find her more con¬ 
trollable, if I may use the word.” 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 221 

“Do I need you, Joseph Chewey, or any man that’s 
living, to show Me how a horse or a child, or a woman 
should be kept under control?” 

“Why no, Mr. Grundall,” returned the offender, humbly 
touching his forehead. “I shouldn’t think o’ presumin’ 
in that there sort o’ way.” 

“Then don’t you offer your betters advice that isn’t 
wanted!” said the Grower. “Faggis, I expect you up at 
the House at sharp two-thirty, or you do no deal with me 
to-day. Is that quite clear to you?” 

“As daylight, Governor,” said Faggis. 

“Then remember it. Hold on, Hetty! Take that, 
Satan’s Aunt!—and get along with you!” 

And leaning over the apron to lash the mare viciously 
across the withers, wrenching at her bit as though deter¬ 
mined to dislocate her jaw, the Grower and the mare and 
the gig were gone, in a cloud of dust intermingled with 
stinging chips of road-metal. And with them a black- 
eyed young lady some years older than Stephen,—of whose 
presence, buttoned in as she was beside the Grower’s bulky 
figure, under the leathern gig-apron, he had previously not 
been aware. 

“You see ’oo Old Greedy Grabguts ’as got stuck up 
alongside ’im?” asked the potman of the hawker, as the 
cloud of dust subsided with the rattle of hoofs and 
wheels. 

“The young female-” hinted Faggis. “Can’t say as 

I noticed partic’ler.” 

“P’raps not, but you’d ’ave noticed more close if you’d 
’ave bin me. That young woman —or young gal—her being 
no more than seventeen according to the general notion, is— 
What might be the name for the crooked stick—same as 
boys pitch to bring apples down off of the topmost 
branches?” Stephen reddened and grinned at this refer¬ 
ence, possessing a talisman of the kind. “But different 
shaped,” continued the potman, “being what the Savages 
of Horsetralia uses in their Battles.” 

“Strike me pink if I ever heard!” asseverated Mr. Fag¬ 
gis. 

“I’ve seed it in the pictur’ Papers—relating to them 



222 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Savages. And being threw with a twist-like, it comes 
back to the Savage as throwed. ,, 

“Similar to a Fishing Line I once tried my hand at 
casting of, on the Fancy Sheet of Water at the Endon 
Welsh ’Arp. And the way it doubled back on itself, and 
winded round my scrag-like, couldn’t have been beat by 
no Savage, I’m ready to make oath.” 

“ ’Ark ’ere!” said the potman, breathing hard. “Wot’s 
the name of that ’Merican female as Rampages about Guyed 
up in Pantaloons, holding meetings to bring other females 
round to make similar Guys of theirselves? Give her 
name—and you gives me the word.” 

“Blow-Me-Tight! if I can tell you!” said Faggis. 

“Her-” said the potman, breathing harder, and punc¬ 

tuating his utterances by rapping on the barrow-shaft with 
the bottom of the pint-pot, “as Rampages about Guyed 
up, persuading other females—Stop! I’ve got it. Bloomer 
were her name! And similarly the other word were Bloom- 
erang! Now ’ark ’ere! That young party sitting in the 
gig along of Old Grabguts—is a Bloomerang what come 
back to him seventeen years ago.” 

“She’s his daughter, you mean,” said Faggis, “on the 
wind’ard side o’ the blanket?” 

“Mister, take it she is an’ she isn’t,” returned the pot¬ 
man, rubbing his nose, and cautiously lowering his voice. 
“She ain’t the daughter of his wife, which is living with 
him over to Wheatstone, though she is—do any doubt it! 
—the half-sister of his son. She came Bloomeranging to 
Grundall’s gate, one Christmas-tide seventeen year back. 
In a Hamper. Brought by the Carrier. And marked 
‘Perishable. For Immediate Delivery.’ ” 

“If I know anything about Kids—in Hampers or out of 
’em—the Carrier would have a-heerd it squeal,—suppos¬ 
ing him not to be deaf. Though o’ course he might a-bin 
paid to be,” commented Faggis. 

“I dunno’,” said the potman, “nothing about that. An’ 
precious little about kids. But give ’em gin or Daffy 
enough and they’ll sleep round the clock—if you wants 

’em. That night I-” He stopped, reddening about the 

gills. “Is that Boy of yours a-listening ?” he asked. 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 223 

“Not ’im!” asseverated Faggis. “Why, wot put that 
in your cokernut? ,, 

“He looked round sharp-like,” said the potman, cau¬ 
tiously lowering his voice. 

And Stephen, who had been silently wondering how 
such a robust young lady as Miss Hetty could have been 
got into a hamper at any period of her existence, knew 
himself the object of scrutiny on the part of both the men. 
And rounded his shoulders to lumpishness, and assumed 
the mask of stolidity that had helped him to do the Enemy’s 
work, times and times again. 

A few months back he would not have known how to 
listen while appearing not to, and stow away the points 
of a dialogue which he seemed too dull to understand. 
But the gossip of the potman of the ‘Braby Arms’ had 
quickened his curiosity. He made up his mind to hear 
the rest of what Chewey had got to tell. 

“Supposing you, Joe Chewey, to make reference to a 
Party not now present,” said Faggis, “my belief is as that 
Party, if he listened—which he may ’ave or may not!— 
couldn’t put Two and Two together sufficient to make 
Four on ’em. But ’avin’ formed opinions, be mum, or tip 
us the gag.” 

“Well then,” said the appeased Mr. Chewey, shielding 
his mouth with the pint-pot, which precaution guided his 
utterances more directly to the other’s ear: “when the old 
gent at Brabycott House fell out wi’ Miss Ann, his daugh¬ 
ter, and sent for Grundall Senior to make another Will-” 

“Woa, Smiler!” B. Faggis flicked the prad with the 
whip, and checked him for being restive—being rendered 
somewhat restive himself by the rapid passage of time. 
“Well, an’ wot about the Will? Cackle, my bird, Pm 
waitin’.” 

“ ’Twere becos’ of Miss Ann’s Gallivantings along of a 
Married Party, by who I mean the Grower, as is son of 
Grundall Son. He were then Third Partner in the Firm, 
as you’re aware of,” said the potman, “an’ the Gallivant¬ 
ing had gone furder than the old gent suspicioned then. 
Even when he drawed up the draft o’ the Will, Cutting 
Miss Ann off proper, wi’ a Hundred Pound per hannum 



224 The Pipers of the Market Place 

to be paid ’arf yearly out of the Estate, and leavin’ the 
House an’ the Money an’ the Land to the son he’d driven 
from him-” 

“Meanin’ the father of the Sharp-eared Party you men¬ 
tioned of just now?” 

“The identical same!” Mr. Chewey lowered the pint- 
pot to take a stare at Stephen, who flushed and wriggled 
uncomfortably under this scrutiny. “He don’t favour the 
Brabys,” said the potman critically. “Being big-boned, fair 
and blue-eyed, while they’re black-eyed, sailer and short.” 

“He takes arter his mother, as spanking a woman as 
ever I set eyes on,” said Faggis,—“or ever shall, I’m ready 
to bet. And Handsome is the word!” 

“So I’ve heerd. But a-going back to this as have been 
mentioned betwixt us—no sooner had the Will leaving 
everything to Miss Ann bin’ Proved than Miss Ann she 
vanished. Along of her maid Sophy Petcher, and come 
back in Six months or thereabouts, saying from Foreign 
Parts . . . But two months afore she so came back, the 
Hamper ’rived for Grundall,—him having broke with his 
father, Grundall Junior—and his grandfather—which was 
Grundall Senior—and pitched over the Law. And set up 
with his wife in a house on some land he bought on th’ 
outer skirts of Wheatstone, which gradooal his property 
have growed as he have done.” 

“An’ how did he take the Hamper? Cussing, I’d expect 
of him,” inquired Mr. Faggis, politely smothering a yawn. 

“He cussed and raved a bit, they say, and then sent 
for a woman, being wife of one of his gardeners, and 
suckling a child of her own at the time; and give it her to 
rear.” 

“Might have done worse!” commented Faggis. 

“You’d look to him for that,” said Mr. Chewey, “but 
he might ha’ done better than fetch it home to his own 
house arter it were weaned of, to be brought up along of 
his lawful kids as he’d had by his married wife. She may 
ha’ took it hard or not, her likings was nothing to Grun¬ 
dall ! Though being a easy-going body, she bore no grudge 
agin the child. So Miss Hetty—as they call her that for 
short—her being christened ’Ester—” ended the potman, 



How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 225 

“Miss Hetty have growed up,—and what’s more, she’ve 
growed to be the spit and image of Miss Ann!” 

“Which though often near the House in her lifetime I 
never—not to know it!—seed her,” said Faggis, spitting 
over the side of the barrow, and preparing to drive on. 

“If you’d been bom at the Lodge, like me,—-and bin’ 
boot-boy at th’ House at eleven,—and seen Miss Ann in 
her tantrums and her moods—and suffered by the same,” 
said the potman, rapping the pint-pot on the footboard of 
the barrow, you’d be at no loss to ticket of Grower Grun- 
dall’s barstard wi’ th’ rightful name of her mother, what¬ 
ever they calls the gal! That mother lies in Tolleymead 
Churchyard, and what she were’s forgotten, ’cept by a few 
as knowed her,—like that old man as is dead. And Garvis 
the butler, but he’s dead too; and Mrs. Whicher as were 
housekeeper-cook, and her daughter and niece as were 
housemaids, and have gone away to the Colonies—and 
Sophy Petcher and me!” 

“And her brother, that pore Swipey Cove,” said Faggis, 
polishing his nose on his coat-cuff, “which is parent to 
the sharp-eared Young Customer we was speaking of just 
now. What queers me, is why Petcher—not mentioning of 
the rest of the servants—didn’t put ’im up to a Move or 
two in connection with Hampers and such? Not that it 
’ud ha’ changed the Will into the one they lost of. But 
it might ha’ helped him put on the screw to the tune of a 
Thousand Pound.” 

“Because none of ’em know’d for certain fact ’cept 
Petcher,” owned the potman, “and she were as close as a 
Bramah Safe—unless she were in a Wax. Sometimes she’d 
get in a Regular One, and come down to our place quite 
raging,” he indicated the ‘Braby Arms’ with a backward 
jerk of his head, “and give Mrs. Shooter to understand as 
to up and blow the gaff on Miss Ann, she’d quite made 
up her mind to. But she changed it again, and took back 
what she’d said, each time—being proper well bribed!” 

“And what’s gone of Petcher now?” demanded Mr. 
Faggis. 

“She’s in service at the Grower’s,” replied the man of 
pots, “ever since Miss Ann’s Funeral. As she went to be 


226 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

nurse to Miss Hetty at first, and then took on as House¬ 
keeper.” . 

“Not bein’ well paid by ’er master?” hinted Faggis, 

winking significantly. 

“Ho, no!” responded the potman, winking even more 
significantly, and laying the empty pint-pot against the 
side of his nose. 

“ ’Course not,” responded Faggis. “Couldn’t be thought 
on nohow. Funny old world we lives in, ain t it, and no 
mistake.” He continued, abruptly stemming the flow of 
the potman’s further experiences, “Well, by-bye, my codger! 
Keep ’appy till I see you agin. Where’s that ’ere Bosom 
Friend o’ mine I give you to fill with Stingo? For I avfe 
to do business with the Governor, and will want a drain 
when I’ve done!” 

Upon which, the flat green bottle being produced, filled 
with guaranteed Stingo, the hawker paid and pocketed it, 
and bidding the potman farewell, nudged Stephen, telling 
him to wake up, laid the whip to the dozing pony, and 
pushed on in the direction of Brabycott House. 

“I reckon you piped what that ’ere bloke blabbed, though 
you played Dick Dull,” said Faggis, when the posting-inn 
had been left in the rear a hundred yards or more. “But 
you be mum and shut your trap ’case any of his talk leaks 
out again. The Governor’s your landlord, mind, an’ a 
nasty one to wex.” 

“I’ll be careful, sir,” returned Stephen. “You can trust 
me not to blab, sir.” s " 

“ ’Ope so,” said Faggis. “Though there’s such a thing 
as bein’ too bloomin’ fly. I ’eard a tale or two at ‘The 
- Pure Drop’ as I wouldn’t like my Missus to git ’earin’. 
Are ’em true, Young Shaver, or ain’t ’em? Take an’ spit 
it out.” 

“I’m afraid they’re true,” said Stephen. “Don’t tell Mrs. 
Faggis, will you, sir? I couldn’t help myself anyway. It 
wasn’t my wish to go.” 

Faggis grunted and looked at the boy sideways before 
he answered: 

“Right. We’ll not worry the Missus. But wot about 
your mother? Hay?” 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 227 

Stephen groaned out, clenching his fists till the knuckles 
showed white against their brownness. 

“She knows as I wasn’t willin’, but she durstn’t inter¬ 
fere, sir.” 

“Phew! A pretty Kettle of Fish you’re in,” admitted 
Faggis, flicking the pony, “and Blow-me-tight if I can see 
how you’re goin’ to git out. An’ though not overgiven to 
slack-jor, Shaver, I ’adn’t expected it of you.” 

‘It,’ as Stephen knew, meant carrying poached birds and 
rabbits and hares. 

“And Shavers as foller them persoots don’t long keep 
out o’ Chokey, as the Blokes they work for cuts away, 
an’ leaves ’em to face it by theirselves. Now you know 
my views on the pint and my Missus’s would match ’em. 
But here’s the Lodge o’ Brabycott House and here’s the 
Gates, and the Carriage-Drive. An’ whether I done wrong 
in bringin’ you or not, Perish me if I know!” said Faggis. 
“But at the same time Bust me if I didn’t mean you 
well!” 


4 

The prad and the barrow with the man and the boy 
turned in between huge rusty lodge-gates, standing open, 
and presided over by a little empty lodge; and rattled up 
a long straight carriage-drive bordered by elms and flower¬ 
ing chestnuts, and overgrown with grasses, nettles and other 
weeds. Narcissi and purple iris bloomed in clumps under 
the shelter of overgrown rhododendrons, flaunting magnifi¬ 
cent trusses of mauve and crimson bloom. Lilacs were 
blossoming everywhere, and tall glossy-leaved Portugal 
laurels opened their almond-scented sprays of flowers in 
the genial warmth of the sun. Here rooks were building 
in the tops of the elms, or brooding on nests new-finished, 
their blackness tinged with violet against the turquoise blue 
of the sky. And blackbirds and robins and thrushes were 
singing melodiously. And a stoat slipped across from bank 
to bank of the neglected carriage-drive, and a gaunt and 
ragged-looking cat, possibly the wild descendant of some 
bygone kitchen favourite, ran nimbly up a mossy trunk, 


228 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

carrying a squeaking sparrow, and vanished down a gaping 
hole where the tree forked, high overhead. 

And then the avenue ended, in the gaunt desolation of 
Brabycott. The House faced south-west and was great and 
square, with many crowperch gables, and was built of old 
red brick, faced with creamy-yellow freestone, in the style 
that Stephen, long years after, learned to know as Jacobean. 
A broad paved terrace edged with a sunk wall and set with 
neglected yew-trees stretched before the blinded windows 
that stared like blank, dead eyes in the face of the noonday 
sun. 

Contrary to Stephen’s expectation Mr. Faggis did not 
check the pony. He drove on and passed the hall-door, 
which was on the north-west side of the house. A high 
brick wall covered with fruit-trees, well pruned and in a 
flourishing condition, ran out from the end of the north¬ 
west side, and had in it an open carriage-gate. The pony 
trotted in at this gate, and they were in a great stable-yard. 
And in the yard,—which was enclosed by coach-houses, 
offices and stables—Grower Grundall’s high-wheeled gig 
stood leaning on its shaft-ends, and Grower Grundall’s raw- 
boned black mare could be heard kicking and plunging in 
one of a row of neighbouring loose-boxes, as though she 
were possessed with a furious desire to kick herself to 
death. 

“Hark at her! Satan’s Aunt he called her, you remem¬ 
ber? Blimed if I don’t by ’arf believe there’s somethink 
in the name. Gimme Smiler’s nosebag from the back o’ 
the barrow,” said Faggis, concealing his pony’s countenance 
with the article referred to, “and ’ave a look round the 
place if you wants, while me an’ the Grower ’as a jor. 
The garden’s ’tother side o’ that wired gate you sees the 
key a-sticking in. But don’t you get touching of no flowers, 
nor no grapes, nor yet no peas nor strawberries in none 
o’ the houses. For the Governor’d find out, and then you’d 
be Uncommon sorry for yourself.” He added as Stephen 
nodded his head to show he heard the warning; and shook 
it to intimate that he would not touch, whatever the tempta¬ 
tion might be, and clumped off in his clumsy ploughboy’s 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 229 

boots to the wired gate, and went through it: “Though blow 
me if I knows the boy who ’as a better right!” 

“And who’s the boy who has the right to trespass here 
at Brabycott?” demanded the Grower’s roaring voice at 
the back of the hawker’s head. 

You crop up so oncommon quiet, Governor,” said Mr. 
Faggis, wheeling to meet Grundall’s bloodshot glare, “that 
you ketched me talking to myself. Like a kid or a old 
woman, I dunno which. As to the boy, you knows him! 
No blindin of your eyes, Governor. Back a goodish while 
upon the road you knowed. You can’t gammon Me!” 

“And if I knew—and I haven’t owned I did—why have 
you brought him over?” demanded the Grower, slightly 
mollified by the implied compliment. 

“Pre’aps to let him see his grandfather’s house—and I 
don t say that s the reason neither!—before it passes for 
everyway into a stranger’s hands. More like,” said Fag¬ 
gis, cos I wanted a boy to keep an eye on the barrer in 
case you might be wishful to call me into the house.” 

“The yard’s good enough for a chap like you, and the 
company you carry,” retorted the Grower, stinging with 
both thongs of the double intent. “I’ve had the things 
that are for sale put in the smaller coach-house. There’s 
some rattletraps from the old nursery, and a pair o’ globes 
from the library, and an escritoire and a coal-scuttle and a 
screen, and a big old library chair. Enough to load you, 
I should say, without the stuff you carry. And, as I’ve 
got no time to waste, come in and look at ’em.” 

He kicked open the door of a coach-house near, which 
stood ajar, and they went in. Stephen on the other side 
of the wall could hear the bullying voice of the Grower 
and Faggis’s husky tones replying, until he moved out of 
earshot and forgot all else in the joy of this new place. 

The garden—a great, square space within high brick 
walls, covered with cherry and peach and plum,—was in 
apple-pie order, strangely contrasting with the neglect and 
decay evident elsewhere. Tufts of wallflower and narcissi 
and hyacinths and clumps of bronze and purple iris, anem¬ 
ones violet and crimson and pink, and tulips of parrot- 


230 The Pipers of the Market Place 

gay hues, peonies blood-red or snowiest white, peopled the 
moist, well-cultivated soil under the gooseberry and cur¬ 
rant bushes, their leafy boughs already hung with fruit of 
topaz and jade. 

Across the middle of the garden ran a triple row of glass¬ 
houses. No gardeners were visible, it being the dinner- 
hour. . . . Stephen tiptoed to a greenhouse and peeped 
inside it. It was full of carnations, rose and pink, lifted 
and potted in September, flowering beautifully still, though 
April had seen them bloom. . . . Paddington Beauty, and 
Astin’s Lady Paget; Galatea and Roi des Roses; ranged 
in orderly platoons upon well-ventilated stages, with a dozen 
other beauties that have other names to-day. He moved 
away and from a ground-frame a wave of violets washed 
over him, making him think of his mother who worshipped 
violets. . . . And then through the doors of a forcing- 
house that stood open to let in the sunshine, yet stronger 
invitations streamed, and Stephen was dragged thither by 
the nose. He opened the door a little wider yet—slipped in 
—partly closing it after him—and stood between the cin¬ 
der-beds, too stunned to do more than stare. 

For the forcing-house, some fifty feet long by twenty- 
three wide or thereabouts—its glass shaded with Astin’s 
green, its height about nine feet to the roof—was filled 
with Roses in blossom. 'Lou Buckleys’ of pale silvery 
pink, growing upon their own roots in beds of well-mixed 
leaf-mould, with a path of clean slag and crushed cinders 
running up between the beds. And the heart and the eyes 
of the boy were filled with the glory of their beauty and 
colour, and his nose was tickled and delighted with the 
sweetness of their smell. 

“ ’Tis 'Lou Buckley,’ ” Stephen stammered, his mouth 
and eyes wide open, and the heart under his hunkumed 
smock thumping with ecstasy. He looked at his worshipped 
one and longed, and she, the coquette and charmer, looked 
back at him and sent forth a stream of fragrance that 
drowned his soul. 

"I mustn’t,” said Stephen, struggling in the waves that 
swirled deliciously about him: "I mustn’t do it—and yet 
I must! ’Tis as if she telled me to!” He slipped his hand 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 231 

underneath his smock, and fumbled in a breeches’ pocket, 
and brought out an ancient one-bladed knife, and opened 
it recklessly with his teeth; “I mustn’t do it—an’ yet I 
must!” he whispered to himself in agony, as he looked 
about for the loveliest bloom within his covetous reach. 

. . . “And I will do it!” He planted a toe upon the border 
of the cinder-bed, and braced both soul and body to commit 
the frightful act. . . . 

The wild blood dinning in his ears, and his guilty heart’s 
drub-drubbing drowned the creak of the swinging hothouse 
door, and the footsteps at his back. Even as the knife 
blade severed the green stalk of Lou Buckley, and she fell 
into Stephen’s reverent clutch, Retribution fell on him. . . . 

“You thief! . . . You filthy little thief! ...” A small 
hand grabbed him by the scruff, and a shower of stinging 
buffets and smacks accompanied the shower of epithets. 
“You nasty, dishonest little brute, where do you expect 
to go to? Uncle Greg! Here’s one of the village boys 
robbing the forcing-house!” 

“Leggo!” Half-throttled by the strenuous twist of the 
grip upon his neck-band, and dazed by the vigorous buffets 
which continued to salute his ears, Stephen was only con¬ 
scious that his treasure was in peril. . . . “You leggo, who¬ 
ever you be! Don’t you see as how you’ll make me spile 
her?” he added, and, with a sudden duck and twist, tore 
himself free and faced round. 

Faced to confront the giver of the slaps with which his 
ears were tingling. A short, strongly-built, black-eyed 
young lady in a maroon cloth dress, much frilled and 
flounced, and a fur-trimmed jacket to match. With a hat 
of bright blue velvet displaying the tail of a pheasant, said 
hat being balanced on a mound of hair, ending in a water¬ 
fall of curls. A young lady with a narrow sallow face 
(at the moment flushed with exercise) whose black eyes 
were too small, and set too near a large and heavy nose. 
Whose jaw was too square, and whose mouth too straight, 
to mean anything but Will and Temper; and who reminded 
Stephen, oddly enough, of some one he had never seen. . . . 

“George Hoggam! Abel! . . . One of you.” As she 
turned the head with its flamboyant hat to shriek for ab- 


232 The Pipers of the Market Place 

sent gardeners, Stephen knew her from the rearward view 
for the Grower’s companion in the gig. “Fve told Uncle 

Greg again and again that when the men go to dinner-” 

She petulantly pulled out a gold Swiss watch at the end of 
a gold neck-chain, and tossed her head as she thrust back 
the watch, until her long gold ear-rings and her coarse 
black curls made you giddy by the way they dangled and 
swung. ‘Tve said over and over that somebody should be 
left to keep an eye on the gardens. ... You village boys 
are always such dishonest little toads!” 

As her ear-rings and her curls swung round again, 
Stephen recalled the Hamper, and wondered how these 
feathers and flounces and curls could have been got into 
so small a space. For you couldn’t picture Miss Hetty 
as ever having been a baby. And yet, he supposed there 
had been a time—and caught himself wanting to laugh. 

“You, Boy!” she demanded, stamping a foot, daintily 
small and well shod, and by far the greatest attraction 
that this domineering young lady possessed. “What’s your 
name, and where do you live? Look me in the face and 
answer unless you want to be given in charge and taken to 
prison by the Police.” 

“There’s no Police hereabouts,” returned Stephen, look¬ 
ing at her squarely. 

“There are, there are, there Are!” said Miss Hetty, wax¬ 
ing exceedingly shrill. 

Stephen knew that she was lying, because the Tolley- 
mead and Brabycott constable had been off duty and dig¬ 
ging in his garden when Faggis had driven past. That he 
was now comfortably having his tea, with his wife and 
the eldest baby, was on the verge of certainty, unless he 
had had a call. 

“I’ve said there are Police and there are Police. We 
keep them on the premises. And bloodhounds and man- 
traps and spring-guns,” shrieked Miss Hetty, “for thieves 
who come to steal. Don’t dare to grin at me like that!” 
Stephen hadn’t known he was grinning. “What is your 
name and where do you live, you wicked little brute?” 

I lives over to Tolleymead, and my name be Stephen 



How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 233 


Braby,” Stephen told her, stealing a glance at the rose 
that reminded him of a sweeter face. 

“Where did you get that name?” demanded Miss Hetty, 
frowning. “Don’t shuffle, but look me straight in the 
face if you can, and mind you speak the truth!” 

“I reckons-” began Stephen, wearying of her and 

her temper and her frills and feathers. 

“Don’t reckon!” she snapped at him, tapping the ground 
with a small imperious foot. 

“I ’spect I got it from my father,” amended Stephen. 

“And who’s your father?” bounced Miss Hetty. 

“He’s Mr. Wilfrid Braby of th’ Wheatacres, Tolley- 
mead.” 

The black eyes were on Stephen’s, with a jeering mock¬ 
ery in them. 

“And did your father send you here to steal my uncle’s 
flowers ?” 

“He didn’t,” said Stephen, quivering at the stab. “He 
never knowed I come here. An’ I reckon my mother she’d 
Hammer me if I told her where I’d been.” 

“Humph! If I let you keep that rose, what will you 
give me?” asked the young lady. 

“I’ve got nothin’,” said Stephen wistfully, glancing at 
the treasure in his hand. “I might gi’ you my Robinson 
Crusoe. No!—that belongs to my father.” 

“So you won’t rob your father,” sneered Miss Hetty, 
“though you’ve robbed my Uncle Greg?” 

A hot flush raced over Stephen, beginning between his 
shoulders. He set his teeth, and looked boldly at the 
owner of the sharp black eyes. . . . 

“My father were born in Brabycott House, and th’ place 
belonged to his father. It’s more like as you and Grower 
Grundall came stealing roses here!” 

“My Uncle bought and paid for the place, and all that’s 
in it belongs to him. But you”—the black eyes glittered 
queerly—“shall have that rose for a kiss. Do you hear 
me, Stephen Braby?” 

“Ay!...” 

“Then what do you say ? . . . Answer! . . 



234 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Stephen’s narrowed blue eyes considered her, from the 
covert of their black-lashed lids. His old cloth cap had 
fallen off when she pounced on him to buffet him, and his 
curls, the colour of reddish wheat, stood on end all over 
his head. Giving him an air akin to one of Blake’s ex¬ 
ultant cherubim, whose locks are blown back and upwards 
by the Wind that is the Breath of the Divine. His nose 
being snubby at this time, we will not dwell upon it. But 
possibly his firm red mouth with the quirk in each deep-cut 
corner suggested the idea of kissing to Hetty Grundall’s 
mind. 

He wanted the Lou Buckley in his hand more than all 
his world could give him. . . . But to kiss Miss Hetty 
Grundall. . . . Something in him whispered “No!” He 
looked at the flower wistfully, and then with a painful ef¬ 
fort, laid it down on the edge of the parent pot and picked 
his cap from the ground. 

“So you. won’t? All right, you little toad!” The black 
eyes glittered angrily. 

“No, Miss!” said Stephen simply. 

“And why won’t you?” 

“I’d rather not say!” 

She burst out laughing and caught him roughly round 
the neck, and kissed him on the mouth. He struggled in 
the hateful hug, for her breath was not sweet like his 
mother’s, and her lips were dry and burning, and he shrank 
from the touch of them. He had rather the bar-maid at 
the cross-roads public-house had kissed him, since kissing 
there must be. But Hetty was strong and determined, and 
you couldn’t hammer a girl! 

Finally she thrust him against the greenhouse door and 
kissed him until she wearied. Then she released him and, 
pointing to the rose, roughly told him to take it, and go. 

“And don’t come sneaking here again. Now, then, ske¬ 
daddle!” 

And Stephen with a swelling heart moved away—with¬ 
out the rose. He heard Hetty’s shrill voice call to him, 
and glanced back over his shoulder, to see her wrench Lou 
Buckley’s head from its calyx of tender green. Next mo¬ 
ment the flower struck him on the face and tumbled on 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 235 

the garden pathway; and that fragrant missile hurt him 
so that he fairly burst out crying, threw up his arm to hide 
his eyes, and shamefully ran away. 

5 

Miss Hester Grundall, or Hetty as one may call her, 
made no effort to pursue Stephen, though he heard her 
singing after him as he fled from the scene of his defeat: 

“Cry, Baby, Cry, 

Put a finger in an eye-” 

had given place to the other rhyme about “Cowardy, 
cowardy Custard who stole his mother’s mustard”—by the 
time Stephen reached the wired gate, and dodged through 
it to the stable-yard. Where Grower Grundall and Faggis 
could be heard engaged in bargaining over the various ar¬ 
ticles deposited in the small coach-house for sale. 

Divers of these articles had already changed owners. 
To wit, a copper coal-scuttle green with ancient verdigris, 
and a brass fender and fire-screen, much in the same state; 
a child’s cot, once painted blue, now faded to uniform 
drabness; and a pair of globes, mounted in mahogany 
frames on casters, the Terrestrial sphere badly patched 
with mildew in the region of North America, and its 
Celestial brother similarly afflicted, much to the hurt of 
certain of the sprawling mythological figures representing 
the Signs of the Zodiac. 

There were in addition a battered walnut escritoire with 
many drawers, and very few handles, and a shabby brown- 
leather-covered easy-chair of most capacious size. These 
two articles being objected to by Mr. Faggis as occupying 
the unsaleable border-line between Modern and Antigreek. 

“Come, come, man!” said the Grower, hectoringly, as 
Stephen lingered near the threshold. “Don’t pitch me that 
stale old story about robbing your family. Make an offer 
for the chair and the other thing, or leave ’em for another. 
My time is worth too much to waste on Hawkers, d ye 
see ?” 


236 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“It’s like this, Mister, don’t you twig,” objected Mr. 
Faggis, wiping his square red face with the ends of his 
bright silk neckerchief. “If this here Heskitore, and that 
there Chair ’ad bin made when our Most Gracious was 
trollin’ a Noop in a Poke Bunnit, and lace-edged panta¬ 
loons, they’d a’ bin wot’s called Modern,—and I could 
see my way to selling of ’em, to young folks lately Married, 
an’ Furnishing a Nouse on the cheap. Likewise if they ’ad 
’ave come to shape in the times as you ha’ read of, when 
people Raddled their cheeks and stuck their ’eads in the 
Flour Tub, and the men wore dimond Eyebusters in the 
front o’ their gophered shirt-frills, an’ dimond buckles in 
their shoes, an’ silk stockin’s and satting smallclothes, I 
could sell of ’em as Antigreeks or Hire ’em out to Artisses, 
being Gorgeous—and there was Three Gorgeouses of that 
sort. But the other Gorgeous as come after ’em—what 
built the Pavilion at Brighting—the Puffy-faced Bloke with 
the Choker and Curls—he ain’t no manner o’ good! Too 
near he is and yet too far, as the Furnishing Couples don’t 
want ’im!—nor the Artisses—neither St. John’s Wood, 
Hampstead, Bayswater nor Chelsea—will touch him with” 
—Mr. Faggis had a flash of inspiration—“with the prog- 
ging end of a Switzer Yelpingstock. Which being so, I 
should rob myself and likewise my Missus, if I offered you 
—for the Heskitore and the Chair—a penny over One Pun’ 
Ten.” 

“Two pounds and they’re yours,” said Grundall, “with 
the other-” He was going to say 'trash,’ but substi¬ 

tuted “articles. For which you agreed to pay me Nineteen 
Shillings, you know.” 

“Eighteen gen,” said Mr. Faggis promptly, “and not an¬ 
other mag, Governor.” 

“Done with you then, and you take the stuff away with 
you,” said Grundall, as Faggis pulled out a leather bag and 
untied the string with his teeth. “They came out of the 
old man’s library,” he added, pocketing the money, “and 
my gorge gets up at the sight of ’em, particularly the chair.” 

He looked all gorge as he said it, with his great red 
face, topped by the hat worn by John Bull in Tenniel car- 
tooQs, merging into the swollen crimson neck that was 



How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 237 

swathed in a violet scarf. The gross belly of him, ag¬ 
gressively thrusting out the fronts of his drab cloth box- 
coat; and his bloated hands in knitted gloves; and his vast 
round calves bulging out over the mahogany tops of his 
top-boots, and the elephantine feet that filled those vast 
square-toed receptacles, completed such a picture of sen¬ 
suality, greed, and coarse, unscrupulous cunning, that B. 
Faggis contemplated him with dubious admiration, and for 
Stephen he became the living realisation of the Ogre in 
the nursery rhyme about Fee Faw Fum. 

“Particularly the chair,” he went on, “though it cost a 
pretty penny, and you’ve got it dirt-cheap, my codger, as 
you know as well as me. For the Old Man died in it,” 
said the Grower,—“and though I didn’t see him, I could ~ 
pretty well guess what he looked like, even if I hadn’t been 
toid.” 

“That was a rummy start, that was!” said Faggis, dust¬ 
ing the leather,—which had a well-marked grain in it— 
with a ragged carriage-cloth. “Over seventeen year ago, it 
were—and judging by the look of him, I’d have laid a 
dollar on his chance of living to this ’ere day. A bit bluish 
about the dial he might ha’ been; and short-winded in 
speaking, which is what my Missus noticed at the time, or 
so she tells me now. But with your experience of females, 
Governor,” said Mr. Faggis, politely, “you’re aware that 
their sharpness in having foretold events as is going to 
happen, is all of a piece with their closeness in keeping 
’em dark till they’ve come off.” 

“Your wife was with you here, I know, that last day 
of the old man’s lifetime,” said the Grower, fixing his 
prominent eyes upon the hawker’s face. He stuffed a great 
hand into a pocket of his coat, and said, swinging a heavy 
hunting-crop he usually carried, with the other; and tap¬ 
ping with its leather loop on the mahogany top of his boot, 
“Now, Faggis, my man, between yourself and me, have 
you got anything to add to that Deposition you. dic¬ 
tated and signed and swore for those lawyers in Furnival s 
Inn? If so, let’s have it, off the reel. It’ll be useful to me 
at present. And in return I’ll put something in your way 
that’ll be of use to you!” 


238 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Much obliged, Governor,” acknowledged Faggis, with¬ 
out any great heartiness, however. 

“The Chancery Case was a twelvemonth old, a mere 
Baby of a Chancery Case,” said Grundall, “when my grand¬ 
father—dead now, but a sharp old fox!—chanced to get 
wind of a tale that the Will he’d drafted and sent out here 
by his clerk on the Fourteenth of August, 1855, had been 
duly signed by old Braby in the presence of and witnessed 
by, a pair of travelling hawkers, a man and woman who 
were in the way of buying the rubbish here.” 

“You’ve got it pat enough, Mister,” said Faggis with a 
touch of sulkiness, “and being so, I says once more, as 
there’s nothink to put to that! We come, we signed, and 
we padded the ’oof as soon as it were anyway possible, 
and having bin paid for our trouble, we put it out of our 
’eads.” 

“Tusser, Worrill & Stickey of Furnival’s Inn, Solicitors 
for Wilfrid Braby,” said the Grower, wagging his great 
double chin, and rapping his boot with his crop, “interro¬ 
gated you, Faggis and your wife, and took your Deposi¬ 
tions at their office in the November of 1858. Now, with 
regard to these statements of yours-” 

“Which we took our Oaths to, Governor,—if you’re hint¬ 
ing as we kep’ anythink back,” said Mr. Faggis, “you’re 
wrong! Me kissing of the Book and not my cuff, nor my 
Missus her knuckle or thumbnail, and speakin’ the truth, 
an’ the whole truth, as we was pledged to do.” 

“But something you didn’t swear to,” said the Grower 
with pouncing suddenness, “whether either of you saw 
where the Will was put when duly signed and so forth? 
Or whether you were accessories to its being hidden away 
somewhere? Or whether you didn’t take it-” 

“Steal it, you means!” retorted Faggis. 

“I mean what I say,” roared the Grower, purpling to 
the rim of his hat. “Don’t put words in my mouth, my 
man, or you’ll be sorry for it! I ask whether or no you 
took the Will, with Braby’s knowledge, to keep for him? 
He had been queer in his ways o’ late—every one agreed 
to that!” 

“Lord strike my dear old Missus and me as dead as 




How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 239 

Mr. Braby is!—and he’s pretty near Dnst by this time,” 
said Faggis, “as I should judge!—if we ever was asked to 
take the Will, or see him hide it anywhere, or heard him as 
much as drop a hint of hiding of it away! Look you here! 
How my Missus came with me that day were part an 
accident,—her being a widder not long made, and still wear¬ 
ing blacks. And being out o’ spirits and low in her mind, 
along of her First One dying, I’d persuaded her—having 
my ’Opes for by and by—to come on a Round with me. 
In the identical Barrer which you see waiting outside there. 
Me driving a Mule in it them days, named Scruncher, being 
given to Bite.” 

The Grower nodded, taking a great hand out of the 
pocket of his box-coat, rubbing a mottled ear with it, and 
putting it back again. 

“At East Marnet,” went on Faggis, “meeting a Party 
as we knowed in the Hay and Fodder line,—we heard 
from him as two of the grooms at Brabycott have got 
the Sack. And that some business is like to be done in 
truckle-beds and deal chests o’ drawers, and washstands 
from the loft-rooms where the outdoor-servants used to 
sleep—over the Stables there.” 

In pointing towards the party-wall, dividing the coach¬ 
house from the stables, these together forming the south¬ 
east side of the great deserted yard, the hawker prodded 
with his thumb almost directly at the stomach of the 
Grower; who wagged his chin, confirming so far the state¬ 
ments that had been made. 

“They kep’ us a good while a-waiting in this here bloom¬ 
ing Stable-yard,” said Faggis, “for old Mr. Braby druv’ 
his bargains for hisself, for fear of being Done. So I 
puts on Scruncher’s nosebag, and me and my Missus ’as 
a peck out of her basket, and a drop o’ Swipes likewise for 
to carry of it down. At last we hears the front door bang, 
and a Fly as had bin’ standing afore it—hired from the 
Tipping Marnet Arms—us knowing the Bloke on the box! 
—went rattlin’ down the kerridge-drive,—and I nudges of 
the Missus, seeing old Mr. Braby come a-walking into the 

Yard.” . . 

“Not looking at all as though Old Bones was grinning 


240 The Pipers of the Market Place 

at his elbow ?” asked the Grower, chafing with his big 
gloved hand at the other ear this time. 

“A bit lead-coloured about the Dial and pouchy under 
the eyes he were. And short in the Puff but no more 
nor he’d bin the fust time as I set eyes on ’im. And I’d 
called here regular three times a year, said Faggis, for 
rising five year. Ever since I d set up in business in Lower 

’Olloway.” . . 

“He broached the business of witnessing the Will unex¬ 
pectedly, Hay?” said the Grower, taking the thong of his 
hunting-crop from between his big yellow teeth. 

“So help me, Jimmy Johnson, Governor!” responded Mr. 
Faggis, “he give neither myself nor my Missus a single 
whiff of what he’d got at the back of his mind. He took 
us up the ladder, and then he says,—a-showing that he’d 
got a folded Parchment stowed in his inside-pocket like,— 
‘There’s a table here, and a pen and ink. Oblige me by 
witnessing this Document. . . . Stop though! If you’re 
man and wife I don’t know as wot it’s legal,’ he says, 'and 
shall ’ave to call across the yard, and get my coachman 
in.’ So I tells him as we’re not married yet,—my Missus 
blushing a good ’un, and we’re ready for to oblige him, her 
being a bit of a Scholar, though I’m no shakes at a Screeve.” 

“Meaning that she could write and spell, and you could 
too, but badly?” (The Grower swallowed back a curse 
and substituted) “Very well. Go on!” 

“We got to the end here, Governor,” said Mr. Faggis, 
mopping his now perspiring face with unaffected relief. 
“He buttons up the Will inside his coat, though not so 
careful as formerly—and he clinches the bargain for the 
hodds an’ hends, an’ I hands over the shigs. And he goes 
down the ladder and back to the house. And I carries 
down the Furnitur’, my Missus lending a nand-like with the 
Pillers an’ mattrasses an’ such. And we loads up and 
drives back to my place at Lower ’Olloway. And it might 
be two days arter as I reads on the front of a daily 
noospaper: 'On August Fourteen, at Brabycott, Hert¬ 
fordshire; Geoffrey Thomasson Braby, aged Seventy-three. 
This is inserted by his sorrowing daughter. No Flowers, 
by request.’ ” 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 241 


“And that's all you can tell? Or will tell?” blustered 
the Grower. “Regarding the Will, which subsequently dis¬ 
appeared. Though I say to you on my solid oath.—Give 
me the tip where it’s to be found—a nod’s as good as a 
wink to a blind horse!—and you’ll have done the most 
profitable day’s work you ever did in your life.” 

“Gosmejudge if me or my Missus could give you a tip 
to go by,” said Faggis emphatically, “an’ that’s the solemn 
truth.” 

“Very well!” said the Grower, with large drops starting 
on his great red countenance. “That’s your last word. 
Now take your traps, and get to Hell with you!” 

“Arter you, Mister,” returned the hawker, knuckling his 
front lock respectfully, a proceeding which, as it was cal¬ 
culated to do, increased the Grower’s ire. 

“None of your insolence on my premises. ... Be off 
with you!” champed Grundall, walking with his great 
stomach thrust out, squared elbows and arrogantly turned- 
out toes from the coach-house back into the stable-yard. 
Here his bloodshot glare encountered Stephen, meekly 
sitting on an upturned basket, and he fell upon this 
new victim with: “You, boy, what business have you 
here ?” 

“ ’Asting your pardon, that boy is mine!—leastways for 
the present!” said Faggis. “You lend us a hand, Shaver, 
an’ we’ll histe these movables aboard.” 

So what time the Grower, following his stomach in his 
own arrogant fashion, square-toed back to the gate in the 
garden-wall, to meet a brace of gardeners coming back from 
dinner, and curse and bawl at the inoffensive men, until 
he bawled them pale, Faggis, shedding his plush waistcoat, 
and cheerfully helped by Stephen, proceeded to erect on the 
barrow a towering pile of movables, and lash them scien¬ 
tifically with sundry ends of rope. 

“Now, Shaver, nip up and set in that chair,” com¬ 
manded Mr. Faggis—the bulky article referred to having 
been secured right end up, “I dunno the bloke as ’as a better 
right,” he added, getting back into his sleeved plushed 
waistcoat, and uncorking the flat green bottle filled by the 
potman of the ‘Braby Arms’; “seeing as it was your grand- 


242 The Pipers of the Market Place 

father’s, which the hold gen’l’man up an’ died in it, an' 
an oncommon solid piece it is of genewine jinery.” 

“His grandfather’s!” echoed a gardener, who, possibly 
magnetized by the bottle, had drawn near enough to over¬ 
hear : “His grandfather’s d’ye say ? Why, then, that’s Wil¬ 
frid Braby’s son, from over to Tolleymead? Here!. Trust 
and Sponder! Come you here an’ take a look at this!” 

Several other gardeners appearing in the yard on their 
way back from dinner, joining the speaker, Stephen perched 
aloft in the chair, by Mr. Faggis’s command, underwent 
the anguish of being observed by four or five pairs of curi¬ 
ous eyes, set in faces strange to him, and hearing the per¬ 
sonal comments made by their various owners’ tongues. 

“He doesn’t favour th’ family overmuch, being that there 
blue-eyed and light-’aired!” commented one of the elders. 
“The Brabys being black as rooks, and as yeller-skinned as 
Injians.” 

“Th’ mother be light-complected and a masterpiece to 
look at,” said the gardener who had spoken first. “An’ the 
boy takes arter she.” 

“ ’Andsome she is,” said Faggis in a hoarse aside to the 
gardener, “and I knows a Marble Antigreek the spit of 
her, though wanting arms. But she ain’t as ’andsome as 
she wos. Nor you couldn’t expect it neither, with a Swipey 
pardner like she’s got, a-lathering her, in his tantrums, as 
I heard myself from Popplewell in the tap of ‘The Pure 
Drop.’ But you’re right, my cove! The Shaver there is 
most oncommon like her. And his ’art being set on seeing 
the place, I brought him here to-day. And there you sets 
in your grandfather’s chair, my Codger,” wound up the 
hawker, raising his voice so as to be heard by the em¬ 
barrassed boy. “Nor all the bellerings of all the Bulls from 
Brabycott to Wheatstone”—this side hit at the Grower 
evoked grins upon the faces of the bystanders—“won’t 
serve to turn you out of it. Will ’em. Young Bendigo?” 

“No, sir,” responded Stephen. 

“Don’t you go to touch your cap to me!” said Faggis. 

“Nossir!” said Stephen, with difficulty keeping his hand 
down. 

“Nor yet again,” said Faggis, who had partly emptied 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 243 


the bottle, “don’t you get a-calling of me ‘Sir/ for you’re 
a gentleman by Blood. Do you twig?” He wiped the neck 
of the bottle and passed it to the elderly gardener, inviting 
him, in Stingo from the ‘Braby Arms,’ to drink a Braby’s 
health. 

So great an impression was made this day on the boyish 
mind of Stephen, that for many years subsequent to the date 
the picture was vivid in his mind. Of the great brick- 
walled stable-yard, with only two dogs in the kennels; 
chirping sparrows hopping about the grass-edged cobble¬ 
stones; the old red-brick, white stone-faced many-gabled 
house filling in a side of the enclosure. The rooks brooding 
and building in the overgrown tops of the elm-trees; the 
rows of stable-buildings, shut up and long disused; the 
empty cobwebbed coach-house, the prad and the hawker’s 
barrow; laden with all the purchased things except the bat¬ 
tered escritoire and, perched above the heads of Faggis and 
the group of staring gardeners, a blushing boy in a hun- 
kumed smock, looking small enough on the roomy seat of 
an old-fashioned leather arm-chair. . . . 

“For in liquor like this ’ere,” said Faggis, to whose 
brain the Stingo may have mounted, “as is calculated to 
stimmylate the whiskers of youth and restore the wigour 
of Age, a toast like I’m goin’ to give can be drunk, an’ drunk 
with propriarity:—'Here’s the ’elth of Stephen Braby, 
Gentleman, and Lover of Roses. An’ may he Grow ’em on 
his own grounds in ’appy days to be!” 

“’Ear, ’ear!” said the elderly gardener, elevating the 
stout green bottle, which might originally have held a quart, 
and taking a hearty swig. 

“Pass it on,” said the man who had spoken first. “Dang 
me, but I’ll toast young Braby!” 

“Finish the bottle among you, chaps,” said Faggis, 
“while I tops my load. And ’ere’s an’ ’arf-dollar ’case it 
don’t go round. There’s more where that stuff came from.” 
He tossed a florin to the nearest man, and caught up the 
walnut escritoire. “Git up in the barrer an’ lend us a 
hand,” he said to a would-be helper, “or hold it a minnit 
while I’m gittin’ in. I’m more of a Lifter than you.” 


244 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Swallowed in the depths of the roomy chair, Stephen 
forgot Faggis and the gardeners, so sweet a rose was flush¬ 
ing through the blue above the elms of the drive. He 
thought of Lou Buckley, and Miss Grundall who had 
scolded and slapped and kissed him; and wrinkled his nose 
at the memory of the kisses as much as the slaps. . And 
4hen a huge and roaring voice broke in upon his reverie: 

“You, Faggis 1 Haven’t I told you to clear away out o 

this? ” . 

Leaning forward, and twisting his neck to the verge ot 

dislocation, Stephen saw that Grundall had returned 
through the wired gate in the wall. Hetty was with him, 
hanging on his arm, sniffing a bunch of roses Lou Buck- 
leys every one of them, it seemed to Stephen’s eyes. 

“Right yer are, Governor,” responded Faggis, striding 
from the shaft over the driver’s board, and signalling the 
volunteer who supported the escritoire. “We’re for the 
toby—which I means the ’igh-road. Flash Patter being 
contr’y to your likin’s. Are you stiddy on them pins o’ 
yours, young man? If so, Hoist away.” . \ 

“You Crunch, what the Devil are you doing there?” bel¬ 
lowed Grundall so loudly and ferociously, that the gardener 
who supported the escritoire turned feeble at the knees, and 
the solid piece of old-world furniture he supported slid 
from his trembling clutches, and fell with a resounding 
crash on the stones of the stable-yard. The dogs chained 
to their kennels barked. A shout went up from the 
bystanders, Miss Hetty shrieked with laughter, and the 
roaring voice of the Grower was heard damning Crunch 
for a fool. 

“Not ’arf such a one as some others I could name,” 
said Faggis, as the victim retreated. He jumped down to 
retrieve his damaged property, and Stephen coming to his 
assistance, they got the battered piece of furniture into the 
trap. “Ketch ’old o’ these drawers as ’ave tumbled out,” 
said Faggis, piling them on Stephen. “ ’Cripes! What’s 
that bloomin’ Parchment you ’ave there in your ’and?” 

“I got nothink,” says Stephen, showing it, “but this long 
bit o’ Paper. There’s a double bottom to one o’ the 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 245 

drawers, as got broke when it tumbled out. . . . No good 
of, be it ?” 

“Can’t say for sure,” said Faggis, handling the stiff 
parchment, his eyes being screwed to pin-points, his square 
red face quite pale. “But s’welp me, Taters, if—this being 
your chance, nottersay your father’s—you don’t ’ave it! 
Git back in the chair, an’ hold on tight to that there bit o’ 
writin’. Move out o’ the road, chaps! ’Day to you!” And 
calling this warning to the bystanders, he jumped on the 
front board, and grabbing the reins, drove the prad through 
the stable-yard gate. 


6 

They were half-way down the carriage-drive where the 
rooks had left off building, and with subsiding croaks and 
caws were going early to bed; and the hawker was urging 
the prad with whip and voice to still more unusual efforts, 
when they heard pursuing footsteps behind them in the 
drive. Voices called to Faggis to stop; but to Stephen’s 
mute astonishment, the hawker was obstinately deaf to 
these appeals. Indeed, he stimulated Smiler to redoubled 
exertions, and reaching the great rusty gates, wide open 
as when they had entered, rattled through, and pushed 
apace upon the homeward road. 

In a brace of minutes as it seemed, they were out of 
sight of the gateway, and had passed and left the ‘Braby 
Arms’ some distance in the rear, when the rattle of wheels 
sounded on the road behind accompanying a horse’s gallop. 
Nearer and more furious, until Faggis looking over his 
shoulder, and seeing himself gained upon by his pursuer, 
drew rein, and slackened speed. 

“We’re in sight of Pound’s cottage anyway, and one 
copper’s better nor nuffink. . . . Hear him cussing Blue 
Blazes,” said Faggis, “an’ leatherin’ at the mare!” 

And Stephen, rising on his knees, and peeping over the 
back of the chair, saw at the end of the long white road, 
narrowing away until it seemed to end in a flaming crimson 
sunset,—-a galloping beast, and a rocking gig, and a figure 


246 The Pipers of the Market Place 

standing up in it, whose right arm rose and fell and rose 
like the piston of some machine. And the shadow of man 
and horse and gig, most strangely and wondrously length¬ 
ened, reeled giddily on before them as they rushed from 
that fire behind. . . . 

“You Faggis! . . . Blast you! . . . Will you stop! 
. . . You’ve pulled up at last, have you?” 

The foaming brute, maddened with pain, and the swerv¬ 
ing rocking vehicle, and the Grower, purple-black instead of 
purplish red, were upon them with these words. . . . 

“—Pulled up, Governor, getting the idear as you wanted 
to ’ave a word with me,” returned Faggis. 

“You well know why, you pattering rogue and double¬ 
dealing Knave! Steady, you Spotted Plague, you! Now, 
Faggis, listen to me!” 

He wrenched the mare on her haunches, and brought her 
to a standstill, with her scarlet nostrils blowing wide, and 
her fierce eyes wildly glaring, and her black coat flecked and 
dabbled with patches of snow-white foam. 

“The men at my place—for which I have paid, out of 
money made by my grandfather and father, Twenty Thou¬ 
sand Pounds in cash to the Assessors in Chancery!—the 
men have a tale of a Will you have found in a drawer,— 
which is my property!” 

“Which belongs to me, Governor,” said Faggis, “having 
paid cash for the same.” 

“I mean the Will, if it is a Will, or whatever the docu¬ 
ment may turn out. The Devil take your fooling!” snarled 
the Grower, showing his fangs. 

“You’re warm, ain’t you, Governor? But ’ard words 
breaks no bones, you know,” said the hawker, hardily. 

Suppose, as I sees Policeman Pounds a-looking over his 
berry-bushes, that you lowers your voice a trifle, and stops 
flourishing your whip. . . . We’d come to a Nunderstand- 
ing quicker, I do assure you!” 

“Very* well, damn your impudence! Answer a question 
if you cah, without beating about the bush or quibbling. 
You found a Document in that escritoire ?” 

“Not me, Mister. The young gentleman behind!” 

“This gaping booby found it then.” The bloodshot eyes 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 247 


rolled on Stephen. “Show me the document, will you? 
Let me have it in my hand!” 

“Governor, excoose me!—knowing your objections to 
Cant talk and Flash patter—if I says to you: Not by no 
means. Nix, Governor, nix! . . .” 

“Answer then. ... Is this document the Will you saw 
signed by Braby in August 1855 ?” 

“Governor, not to deceive you,” said Faggis, “it are. 
Without a doubt. The Will.” . 

“Then,” said Grundall, altering his hectoring voice, and 
leaning with a hand, and something in the hand, on the 
seat-rail of the gig next Faggis, “how much will you take 
for it? Down. In Cash? Think before you answer, man! 
Look! In this pocket-book that I have in my hand are Six 
hundred pounds in Five Pound notes upon the Bank of 
England. I drew them from our Branch this morning. 
Take them, and give me the Will!” 

“And if I takes 'em,” said Faggis, “wot's to prewent 
you, Governor, from stoppin' the numbers o’ them flimsies 
at the Bank, and swearing as I picked 'em up ?” 

“I'll pay you in solid sovereigns. . . . Wherever and 
whenever you’ll take 'em. I'll give you a thousand, Faggis 
—only let me have the Will! It’s buttoned up inside your 
vest,” urged the Grower. “Out with it and take the money. 
Pluck up your courage, you damned fool, and take it, d’ye 
hear?” 

His blackish-purple face, and his bolting eyes, which 
might have been sewn in with red worsted, and the foam 
that blobbed on his swollen lips, most horribly scared 
Stephen; and the paper he sat on seemed to bum like the 
surface of a red-hot stove. But he held to the chair with 
all his strength, and clenched his teeth to keep from shriek¬ 
ing, as the Grower leaned over the rail of the gig on the 
side that was next to Faggis, and made a motion with his 
great gross hand towards the other's breast. 

“Listen, man! . . . For your own sake and your 
wife's!” spluttered Grundall, “take the money.” 

“We’ll leave my Missus out o' this,” said the hawker, 
savagely. “And keep your 'ands off of me, do you hear? 
Be warned, an' keep your hands orf! . . 


248 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Will you? . . ” 

“Not for Nix, I won’t. That’s my last word to you!” 

“Then take this!” bellowed Grundall, thrusting back the 
bribe, and snatching up the driving-whip, shrieking: “This 
—and this—and this! And this!” as the lash hissed round 
Faggis’s head. 

“Stop it, Mister! Do you hear!” shouted the hawker, 
guarding his face as best he might from the furious attack. 
And then there was a frightful scream, and gig and man 
shot past them,—and Stephen saw the great black mare 
ramping mad all over the high road. And heard a dash¬ 
board splinter and crack, and some heavy body falling with 
a dull thud! on the surface of the dusty-white road. 

“My Gord!” Faggis cried out at that, and backed the 
prad upon the footpath, regardless of the rocking of the 
load of furniture; and Stephen, sickening at the sight, saw 
the black mare worrying the Grower, whose great, gross, 
senseless body, in its drab-coloured box-coat, looking less 
like a body than a giant sack of potatoes, she held by the 
scruff in her savage yellow teeth, and struck at with her 
fore-hoofs, as though determined to make an end of her 
torturer for good and all. 

So from the chair on the barrow Stephen gaped in dis¬ 
may at the spectacle; the gig yawing and bumping all over 
the road, and spilling out its cushions with each bump. 
And the mare, with her ears flattened viciously back, and 
one of her fierce eyes bleeding, shaking the Grower,—who 
was bleeding too—as a terrier shakes the life out of a rat. 

Then Faggis shouted and ran in, and grabbed hold of 
the maddened animal’s bridle; and the Tollymead constable 
came clumping up, and hung on to the other side. And 
presently the mare stood still, sweating and champing as 
though the Grower’s blood tasted worse than she had 
expected—while Faggis with the help of Pounds, and one 
or two field-labourers who had appeared on the scene of 
the accident, carried Grundall’s gross insensible body into 
the constable’s cottage; while the other labourer, who could 
drive, rearranged the harness, climbed into the gig and 
bowled away for Wheatstone, to take the news to the 
Grower’s home, and bring a doctor back. 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 249 


“Is Mr. Grundall hurted very bad ?” inquired Stephen of 
the hawker, as, the Grower being deposited on the constable’s 
bed in the care of the constable’s wife, they took leave of 
the constable, who seemed to have missed the scuffle that 
had led to the accident, and getting back into the barrow 
again, turned the pony’s head towards Tolleymead. 

“So I should say myself, Shaver,” returned Faggis not 
uncheerfully. “That bump on the road-metal bein’ enough 
to bust ’is bread-basket. Without bein’ bitten in the fleshy 
part o’ the neck,—though ’is neck-wropper saved ’is scrag 
for ’im!—an’ chipped in as many places as you’d number 
days in the week. Perish me pink!” exclaimed the hawker, 
in dismay, “if I haven’t fergot that Parchment.” 

“It’s buttoned inside my weskit, sir,” said Stephen, pat¬ 
ting his bulging chest. 

“You got some Brains in that cokernut o’ yours, as I 
guessed when fust I seed you,” returned Faggis, tenderly 
fingering the bleeding weal that scarred across his cheek, 
“an’ wotever your station in life may be, it won’t be no 
worse for that, my cove. Not even if you sits as a Member 
in the ’Ouse of Parliament. Wot’s your Old Man’s lurk 
this time o’ day? I wants a word along of ’im.” 

“My old man, sir?” inquired Stephen, opening astonished 
eyes. 

“Yer Father, then,” said Faggis, mopping with the sleeve 
of his plush waistcoat the blood from the whip-cut on his 
cheek. “What’s his lurk about this time? ’Ome sweet 
’Ome or ‘The Pure Drop’?” 

Stephen was quite certain that Braby would be at ‘The 
Pure Drop.’ So they drove there; but only to be informed, 
on the authority of Mr. Popplewell, that Braby had quitted 
the tap-room about half an hour earlier, in the company of 
a Breaker by the name of Mackilliveray. 

“A Breaker of horses, might he be, or a Breaker o’ Shops 
and Houses?” inquired Faggis. 

“The Boy knows all about the chap,” returned Mr. Pop¬ 
plewell. “One of a Gang of navvies, he is, employed on th’ 
Great Northern Extension Works. And him and Braby 
being thick o’ late, Braby may ha’ took him home. But 
whatever’s the matter wi’ your face?” 


250 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Nothin’ that a drain won’t better,” said Faggis, “so bring 
me out a shant o’ gatter.” He continued, when he had dis¬ 
posed of the beer, “Now, Shaver, we’ll strike for ’appy , 
’ome. Nip in when we gits there and tip your dad the 
wink as I’m wishful for a word with ’im,—while not 
wantin’ to give your mother a turn with this striperey mug 
o’ mine.” 

As the hawker’s face was an ugly sight with the great 
red weal across it; and the ear that had shared in the cut 
of the whip had swollen to enormous size, Stephen, remem¬ 
bering that his mother had shrunk of late from kindred 
spectacles, nodded, and Faggis clucked to the prad and 
turned his head towards home. 

It was close upon half-past five o’clock, and the splendour 
of the sunset had faded, though rose and golden tints were 
interfused with the dun grey haze in the south. As the 
prad and the barrow turned in upon the short stretch of 
rutted cartway, Stephen dropped to the ground and, 
sprinting ahead, jumped the garden gate and ran to the 
door. 


7 

The white climbing rose Malvina loved was flourishing 
and full of buds for Summer. It covered the wall on the 
right of the cottage-door and bushed above the lintel-beam. 
So low it hung its trailing sprays, that the fact that the 
door stood open was not noticed by Stephen until he stood 
on the step and lifted his hand to the latch. 

A voice came out of the living-room, as Stephen set foot 
on the threshold. His mother’s. And the deep rumbling 
response came from no one but Mackilliveray. The harsh 
thin laugh that followed on the words was very certainly 
Braby’s. He looked in. A wood-fire burned between the 
hobs, and some preparations were afoot for the scanty meal 
that went by the name of supper, but the tea-kettle was 
boiling over and putting out the fire, and though Malvina 
stood quite near it, she did not seem to see. . . . 

The Enemy lounged, smoking a cigar of the brand 
retailed by Popplewell, in the chintz-cushioned Windsor 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 251 

chair that stood at the corner of the fire-place, a cheap yel¬ 
low-painted bit of furniture, in base contrast with the old- 
fashioned four-post bed at the other side of the living-room. 
A stately piece of furniture in dark old polished mahogany, 
with twisted posts, a canopied top, and faded red moreen, 
curtains trimmed with antique crochet-lace. 

The place was tainted with the reek of the cigar, and the 
rough smell of the navvy’s moleskins, as by the odour of 
his short clay pipe, and two bottles which had contained 
stout. These, with the glasses from which the men had 
drunk, were mixed up with the loaf on its platter, and 
the tea-things on the table spread for the usual evening 
meal. 

Tragedy was in the atmosphere of the single room where 
Stephen’s world was centred. Malvina stood at the table- 
head with her back to the old-fashioned range. Standing 
thus, she faced Mackilliveray, whose bulky, powerful figure 
loomed large in the space that intervened between the table 
and the door. 

She was pale under her sunburn and her oval cheeks 
showed sunken, though the wasting of her figure seemed 
less evident of late. She was quiet, being a woman not 
given to the use of gestures. But the passion of wrath that 
wrought in her blazed from her great grey eyes. 

Stephen could not see Mackilliveray’s face, but he could 
hear him breathing. The thick and heavy sound came in 
at each pause in Malvina’s voice. . . . The square-built 
man with the bright red hair winced under her fierce con¬ 
tempt of him. His thick hide shuddered at each verbal 
thrust, as the bull’s at the prick of the goad. 

“Oncet an’ for all I tell yo’—No! ’Tis no use to argey- 
bargey. ’Tis no use to beg nor threaten—theer’ll ne’er be 
no change in me! Bin yo’ goin’ or bain’t yo’? . . . If yo’d 
wanted to make me think o’ yo’, yo’d ha’ gone yer ways for 
good an’ all, an’ niver set foot i’ this place agen. M’appen 
then I’d ha’ said to myseln: ‘Theer wur one man as loved 
me true!’ But yo’ be as bad as all th’ rest. . . . Out o’ my 
sight wi’ yo’!” 

“I’ll go when ye ha’ heerd me,” rumbled Mackilliveray 
stubbornly, though he had winced when Malvina s hand 


252 The Pipers of the Market Place 

had pointed to the door. “I takes no on fair Vantage, 
seem’ who be settin’ by to hear me.” His blunt head 
wagged towards Braby, lounging smoking in the Windsor 
chair. “As for the differ betwixt Good an’ Bad, I bain’t 
scholard enough to pint it. They be that tangled as Burn 
my eyes if I can tell tother from which! Like th’ charcoal 
an’ salpeter they mixes to make th’ Blastin’ Gunpowder— 
as you can eat fur Salt to your wittles or blow yer head off 
wi’ a pinch.” 

“Good that!” said Braby, tapping his nail on the chair- 
arm to signify approval. But Mackilliveray went doggedly 
on in his heavy rumbling bass. 

“I be a bachelder an’ you be wed. There’s th’ Bad i’ th’ 
business. If I wer’ wedded an’ you a maid, theer ’ud be 
Bad agin. Fur sin’ fust I clapped my eyes on ye—whether 
’tis wakin’ or sleepin’, I fares to see ye an’ hear ye, an’ 
cannowt git no rest! ’Tis like as if a three-inch chain wer’ 
linked an’ rivited about me; I cannowt git me free o’ it— 
an’ I wouldn’ if I cud! An’ the want o’ you is like the want 
fur Air, an’ Bread, an’ Water. A man may live wi’out 
other things. But he dies wi’out they three.” 

She would have scourged him with fresh upbraidings 
here, but his doggedness overbore her. She kept her eyes 
on him sternly as his heavy voice pursued. 

“I cannowt live fur wantin’ ye, married as ye be,” said 
Mackilliveray. “Married to th’ misbegotten tyke as sets 
grinnin’ an’ smokin’ in yon cheer. As’ ’ud sooner tumble 
a strumpet in the back yard o’ a beer house, than lie i’ th’ 
bonny arms o’ ye-” 

“I’ll hear no more!” she said. “Yo’, Braby, put this 
man to th’ door if yo’ wunna ha’ me do it!” 

But Braby crossed his legs as though unmoved by this 
unexpected home-thrust. 

“Suppose we cut the cackle, my friend, and come to the 
business-proposals?” he suggested, with a mocking smile, 
and a sidelong glitter of his black eyes. 

“Ay, I’m cornin’ to th’ business part o’ it now,” returned 
Mackilliveray, heavily. 

“I wunna hear no more fro’ yo’!” cried Malvina, once 
again. 



How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 253 


“Missus, you’ll hear me. Theer’s no Divorce fur poor 
folks,” said Mackilliveray roughly, “but wut be to hinder a 
’Greement, an’ th’ payin’ of Money Down? Fur I ha’ got¬ 
ten a bit o’ Brass, come my way through my mother’s sister 
as kep’ a li’l baker’s shop, an’ wer’ a single soul. Her died 
nobbut two month agone, an’ the li’l shop be mine now, just 
as it stands in Wemlock, on Culver Market Side. An’ the 
li’l house behind—an’ th’ garden too, all full o’ rasps an’ 
currans—be mine to do my pleasure wi\ Naught’s wantin’ 
to make me a home! Naught but the one thing—” said 
the red-haired man, “—as you’ll gi’ me when you comes to 
me. An’ tells me as you trusts to me. An’ lays your hand 
in mine!” 


There is no eloquence that can move like the eloquence of 
genuine earnestness. The passion of the man rang true in 
every word he said. And though the Adversary might have 
baited his hook with a myriad richer offers, not one could 
have tempted the simple soul of Malvina so insidiously 
as this. . . . 

The little baker’s shop on Culver Market Side, with new 
crusty loaves in the window. A tray or two of brown 
pound-cakes and three-cornered raspberry tarts. A vase of 
flowers on the counter fresh-gathered from the little back 
garden. . . . Brass scales and shining crystal jars full of 
sugar-sticks and bull’s-eyes. 

Malvina behind the counter in a new wincey gown and 
white apron, serving the customers with bread, or pastry 
in paper bags. In the little parlour behind the shop—Not 
Braby, sneering and spiteful, profligate, brutal and faith¬ 
less—but the man who stood pleading his cause with her 
in the middle of the floor. 

He was unscrupulous enough in his lawless way of 
wooing, this bull-necked navvy, whose homespun speech 
had the racy smack of her own. But Mackilliveray’s love, 
illicit as it was, had depth in it and tenderness. . . . Had 
he not said to her, many months ago, standing at the door 
of the woodshed: 

“I cannowt see no woman’s face sin’ I ha’ looked on 
yourn.” 


254 The Pipers of the Market Place 

The air of the room vibrated again with his rumbling 

heavy accents: T 

“I binna’ a man wi’ a mouthful o’ words, but to wnat 1 
says I holds. . . . I’ll be trew to ye, my gradely lass, as 
wedded husban’ could be. An’ when yon blaggard cheats 
the gallers an’ th’ Hangman by deem’, I’ll marry ye. ^ Upon 
my oath to God in Heaven! Now I ha’ said my say!” 

He dropped the heavy right hand he had raised, and 
waited for her answer. She breathed deeply and the fire of 
her eyes died out and left them troubled and dim. 

She was thinking. . . . She slowly lifted a hand, and 
moved it before her forehead as though she were thrusting 
away a veil whose folds had baffled her eyes. . She had 
loved the man who sat smoking in the chair, with steady, 
faithful devotion. She had taken him back to her heart 
after years, as though they had been Darted a day. She 
had borne his vicious waywardness, nis abuse and occa¬ 
sional ill-usage, with a forbearing patience that was more 
a mother’s than a wife’s. 

But she was weary to the soul, and the gulf that had 
lately opened between herself and Stephen had made life 
harder to bear. So much harder that when the daybrow 
lifted in the east and showed the eye of morning, she 
wished in her heart that it was night, and at night-fall 
longed for the day. 

She looked about the single room shorn of so many cam- 
forts, for Braby had sold time after time more furniture 
for drink. The hunting-crop hung over the chest-of- 
drawers, on which stood a saucer of violets. She started 
at the sight of this, and the two men watching saw her 
start, and the duller man grasped the reason. He sensed the 
obstacle in the path of his desire, and moved to clear the 
way. 

“M’appen ye be thinkhT,about th’ Boy,” he said in his 
slow thick accents. “You be mortal set on th’ young nar- 
bor, Missus. Well, bring him if he’ll coom wi’ ye! I got 
news along o’ my pot at the tap, as May ha’ gin ’im warnin’. 
Fur pallin’ oop wi’ some poachin’ blokes, I reckon I heerd 
’em tell.” He added as Malvina winced and paled and put 
her hand to her bosom, “I shannot grudge him bed an’ 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 255 


board, an’ he’s gittin’ a broadly chap. We’se fare to find 
him a job wi’ th’ gang, an’ ye’ll see he’ll fend fur a livin’. 
Wut do ye say?” 

Braby interposed. 

“She considers it a liberal proposal. Come, ’Vina. 
Hang delicacy and reserve! We’re waiting for ‘Yes’ or 
‘No.’ ” 

She said, not like a yielding woman at all, looking from 
Mackilliveray to Braby: 

“Theer’s a man as stands in my husband’s home bids 
me break my marriage oath. . . . Theer’s another man, 
my husband,—as hearkens him, an’ hearkens wi’out shame 
or anger. But theer be Another One as said, ‘Thou shan- 
not commit Adultery.’ Yo’ve got my answer in they 
words. Be ’em plain enough fur yo’ ?” 

Mackilliveray made the rumbling noise in his throat that 
might have been laughter or blasphemy. Braby pitched the 
chewed stump of his cigar away and screamed an oath at 
her: 

“By- ’Vina! there’s no sense in you!” 

“Hear rayson, woman!” said Mackilliveray. 

“I’ll listen to nought,” said Malvina, as the dancing fire 
flung their shadowy shapes on the whitewashed wall and 
ceiling, and the redness of the sunset was spilled like blood 
upon the whiteness of the coarse clean tablecloth, and lay in 
a pool at Braby’s feet as he lounged, smiling, by the hearth- 
side. “Not another word will I hear fro’ yo’! Yo’ ha’ paid 
your brass to the man in yon chair fur th’ right to tempt his 
wedded wife to take the way o’ wickedness, an’ broadly 
man as yo’ be,—yo’r nowt but a puppet in his cunnin’ 
hands. For well he knowed yo’d niver win yo’r will wi’ 
me, Bob Mackilliveray!” 

“He telled me ye’d make a mimming mouth,” said Mac¬ 
killiveray loudly and angrily, opening and shutting the 
thick fingers of the hands that dangled at his sides.. “An’ 
seven pound I paid to speak, an’ thretty I’d ha’ paid if ye’d 
come wi’ me. . . . An’ Burn my eyes an’ Blast me! but 
I’ll make ye willin’, one day!” 

It seemed to the shuddering boy at the door, that he 
v would have crossed the floor to her. But her glance had 



256 The Pipers of the Market Place 

shifted, quick as light, to the bread-knife on the platter with 
the loaf. Next instant it gleamed in her lifted hand; and 
Stephen, without clearly understanding the nature of the 
outrage offered her, knew that if Mackilliveray had touched 
her then, she would have killed him with that knife. 

“Let be!” screamed Braby with whitened lips. “Hold 
off, if you’re a wise man! She’ll let daylight through that 
thick hide o’ yours, as sure as hell is hell!” 

“You’ll niver scrat a grey-haired head, ye cankered 
hound!” said Mackilliveray, with the sweat running down 
his heavy cheeks, and the back of his thick red neck. “Ye 
said she wer’ willin’, ye lousy rogue!” 

“Well, she’s changed her mind,” shrugged Braby. “Her 
leaky kennel and her mouldy straw and her bare bone please 
her best. So good-night to you! Why, here’s the boy.” 

“You’re wanted outside,” said Stephen, as Mackilliveray 
swung round, throwing on his cap, and showing a scowling 
face. 

“He browt me here. He did, by jings!” he grumbled. 
“’Twere him as browt me!” And thrusting Stephen 
roughly aside, lumbered heavily out of the house. Walking 
in a high-shouldered awkward way, and swinging his arms 
from the shoulders, like a man spoiling for a fight, and 
cursing as he went. . . . 

“He took me there. I’ll swear to that, jigger me if he 
didn’t!” Stephen heard him say to Faggis outside the 
garden gate, “He said as th’ woman wer’ willin’. How did 
I know th’ differ? Sarve him right if I’d outed him, blarst 
his corn-founded soul!” 


8 

“Listen, ’Vina!” As the thick dupe blustered himself 
away, vowing vengeance on the knave who had betrayed 
him, Braby swaggered out of the chair, and crossed the 
room to his wife’s side. “I went too far, I’ll admit it, but 
I meant no evil by you. Didn’t you say yourself just now 
that I knew you’d never take the chance. The man’s a 
dunderheaded fool! A half-witted booby with a crack on 
you. And I made him pay—oh! he told you the truth— 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 257 


for a chance to pay court to my wife. A brutal thing! 
I’ll go farther, and say it was abominable! You hear me 
admit it, frankly, and say that there’s no excuse. But this, 
of course, that I’m cursedly poor and shabby and out-at- 
elbows. . . . Come now, my girl! Don’t stare at me like a 
woman made of stone.” 

She might have been a statue, for all heed she gave to 
his vapourings. She looked at him, and he felt that she 
looked—as though she had never seen him before. Until 
he laid a hand upon her arm, and then such a shudder went 
through her that, dulled and perverted as his apprehensions 
were, he started back in dismay. 

“Yo’ll take off yo’r hand if yo’ be wise,” she said, look¬ 
ing at him fixedly, and the terrible contempt of her great 
grey eyes seared even his calloused soul. “For nobbut I’ll 
cook yo’r meat fur yo’, an’ clean an’ red yo’r dwellin’, I 
wunnot eat o’ yo’r bread, an’ I be a stranger to yo’r bed fur 
ivermore.” 

She went on, as he blackened and scowled under her look 
and thrust the hand that had touched her into his pocket 
and insolently jingled some coins that were there: 

“There’s two sorrows as a wife may bear, an’ one as she 
canna’ put up wi’. There’s the White Sorrow, when she 
loses her babes,—an’ the Grey Sorrow, when she loses her 
man. The Black Sorrow comes when Shame an’ disgrace 
be brought on th’ woman by her husband. Ay! rattle th’ 
ill-gotten brass i’ yo’r pouch! It should burn yo’ to th’ 
bone.” 

“You’re unreasonable, ’Vina, like the rest of your sex, 
but, like other women, you’re fond of proverbs. Here’s 
one,” said Braby with a snigger and a shrug: “‘Needs 
must when the Devil drives!’ After all, I ve done, no 
worse than a dandy West End Clubman, whose rich friend 
loses money to him at cards for the right to make love to 
his wife. What are you spying and listening for, you 
shock-headed young mongrel?” 

“Mr. Faggis wants a word wi’ you outside,” stammered 
Stephen, who was trembling and white. 

“You’ll use ‘sir’ to me when you address me,” said Braby 
bully ingly. 


258 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Sir,” said Stephen, feeling in his breast for something 

he had hidden there. „ , . ..... 

“Again and louder!” ordered Braby, moving a little 
nearer, with the vicious look that usually heralded a box on 
the ear. 

“Sir,” said Stephen loudly. 

“Don’t shout, damn you!” snarled Braby. So he wont 
come in,” he began again, turning his wrath on Faggis, 
“but bids me to his presence, eh? All right, my nobleman. 
He pulled out a fresh cigar, and said, as he bit off the end 
and struck a match and lighted it, and blew a coarse, un- 
fragrant cloud about the low-pitched room: Ill go and 
listen to what he has to say, and then have the pleasure of 
kicking him. Do you hear, you lout? Why, curse me. 

What’s that paper in your hand?” 

He whipped the folded document from the boy with a 
fierce, rapacious eagerness. He was bluish-white instead 
of sallow now, and his eyes seemed bolting from his head. 
He glanced at the neat clerky script of the endorsement at 
the top of the parchment, turned the sheets—looked at the 
first page and the last—and wrenched at the collar about 
his neck as though it were choking him. No sooner spoken, 
the irrevocable words,—no sooner done, the unpardonable 
thing,—then adverse Circumstances changed, and Fortune, 
so coldly, persistently aloof, came fawning—like a spaniel. 
And yet men ventured to deny that there was a devil . . . 
Fools! 

“When? . . . What? How did you—-—” 

His staring eyes had found the white-faced Stephen. 
His shaking hand had clutched Stephen by the arm. He 
dragged him towards the hearth-place, and dropped, into 
the chair, and made signs for some explanation. Avoiding 
his mother’s frozen face, Stephen delivered his tale: ^ 

“I went with Faggis to Brabycott, wantin’ to look at th 
House there. He bought some old beds and a big armchair, 
an’ a leather-top table fur writin’ on, wi’ drawers in it an’ 
two legs in front, an’ all carved—an’ wi’ a queerish name.” 

“An escritoire. Speak quicker, boy!” 

“Summat like that. An’ that paper dropped out of a 
drawer that had got broken, and had two bottoms to it, 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 259 


like, an’ Faggis he grabs hold. An’ he looks inside, and 
says it’s the Will he an’ Mrs. Faggis signed to, and tells 
me to git back in the barrer and sit fast and hold on to it 
tight. An’ he whips the pony, and cuts away from Braby- 
cott House like winking. An’ Grundall he comes after us 
in the gig wi’ the mare all foamin’ fury. And Grundall an’ 
Faggis has a tug for the Will, an’ he cuts him wi’ the whip 
a good ’un—an’ then he tumbles out o’ the gig, an’ the mare 
she goes fur him. Gits him by the neck an’ worries him, 
she does!” 

"‘Good brute! And has she killed him?” asked Braby, 
with sweat pouring over his face, and his teeth chattering 
in his head. 

“I dunno. But he’s pretty bad.” 

“Where’s Faggis?” 

“He’s outside, waitin’.” 

“Call him in. What’s that? . . .” 

That’ was a knock at the partly-open door. 

9 

“Is Mr. Wilfrid Braby here?” asked a thin, harsh voice, 
and a woman, short and spare, and wrapped in a shawl, 
stepped unasked into the living-room. 

“Who the hell are you?” cried Braby, starting from his 
seat in anger. “Not you, Sophy Petcher, after all these 
years!” he went on, shaking and staring, as she pushed 
back the shawl from a thin, white face, and turned the face 
upon him. “Hang it all, woman! What a wreck you are. 
What have you done to yourself? You look like a sandy- 
white cat that has been near starved to death.” 

“My face has altered like your own,” said the woman, 
“and not for the better. But you can say whether in those 
old days it was the face of an enemy, or a friend?” 

“Friends cropping up already! . . . Phew!” cried 
Braby, with a whistle. “We shall be rich in them by and 
by. But there’s truth in what you say! What have you 
come about? . . . Be quick! We have no time for wast- 

• j j 

mg. 

“I’ve come to bring you a message from Mr. Gregson 


260 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Grundallsaid Sophy, hitching up the shawl so as to re¬ 
cover her head. “My master, as he’s been for the last six¬ 
teen years or thereabouts. And I have had a worse master, 
I’ll say as much for him!” 

“And he has had worse servants,” sneered Braby, you 11 
likely say for yourself. How goes it with our Gregson, 
eh?” 

“Better than might be thought,” returned Petcher, keep¬ 
ing her pale, dilated eyes on the mocking face of Braby, 
as she held the folds of the shawl under her chin with a 
thin, white, claw-like hand. “He’s cruel shook, but not 
dangerous hurt, unless the bite on his shoulder festers. ^ 

“And there’s nothing so poisonous as the bite of a horse,” 
said Braby, with exultant relish. “Let’s hope it won’t turn 
gangrenous, for the sake of the poor gentleman and his 
friends. I fancy I can see ’em, rallying at his graveside. 
Or waiting down below—you know!—till Gregson comes 
along. A meeting that! Eh, woman?” 

“Don’t!” said Sophy Petcher, shuddering, or making a 
twitching movement of her shoulders under the shawl. 

“I don’t!” returned Braby grimly. “Now then, about 
this message?” 

“And sharp’s the word,” said Faggis, appearing in the 
doorway at this juncture with his damaged visage muffled 
in a gay silk handkerchief, “for it’ll be as much as my prad 
can do to git to London ’fore midnight. Begging your 

pardon, Mrs. Braby, ma’am-” He touched his cap to 

Malvina. “But if your good gentleman wants a lift, I’m 
ready to take him free.” 

“Another friend!” said Braby, with his intolerable snig¬ 
ger. “Come, Sophy, what does Gregson say? We are on 
thorns to hear.” 

“He begs you,” said Petcher, pushing back the shawl 
with a hand that seemed transparent, and showing her 
meagre, triangular face between thin loops of ginger-grey 
hair, “not to show the Will you found to-day to Tusser, 
Worrill and Stickey, or any other lawyers, until you’ve 
seen and spoke with him. For his sake and your own!” 

“Not for his sake, and his own sake? Are you quite 
sure, old Sophy?” 



How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 261 

“I am sure that if you’ll only wait until Mr. Grundall can 
speak with you—and the doctor says that to-morrow he 
may risk this without overmuch harm,—it will be for your 
good in the long-run. Leave the Will in hands that you 
can trust if you’ve your doubts of Grundall. Will you go 
to see him, or will you not? I’m to take back your word.” 

“I’ll answer you,” taunted Braby, “when you have given 
me an answer. What nest have you to feather out of this? 
Your own, or whose, if not yours?” 

“Not his,” said the woman, “that I’ll swear!” Her pale 
eyes glittered green like a cat’s in the sunset-tinted twilight, 
and the dancing blaze of the fire on the hearth made her 
shadow gambol on the wall. “Nor my own. Nor yours, 
though, as you have owned, I never was your enemy. Now 
will you come and see Grundall, at The Chestnuts over to 
Wheatstone, at ten to-morrow morning? Answer me,— 
‘Yes’ or ‘No’!” 

“What do you think, Faggis?” asked Braby, turning to 
the hawker, as Petcher shut her mouth with a snap and 
extinguished herself in her shawl. “Shall I risk my head 
in Beelzebub’s jaws, or bid him get back to hellfire?” 

“I should resk seein’ him, if I was you—taking the Will 
along. And a pal to keep eye on it an’ you. Some cove as 
is knowed in this neighbourhood—and held to be straight- 
for’ard, an’ honest in ’is ways.” 

“Yourself, I suppose you mean, my man?” said Braby, 
with intolerable suspicion glittering in his narrowed eyes, 
and twisting the corners of his mouth. 

“Not by ’arf, Mister! For I ain’t no pal o’ yours, as 
I knows!” returned the hawker. “Why not leave the Will 
at ’ome with your wife an’ go to see him on your lone? 
Sick men can’t do much ’arm!” 

“I will leave the Will with my wife,” grinned Braby, 
keeping his glance away from her, “but that she has prayed 
on her knees for years I might never get the cash!” He 
thrust the parchment into a pocket made in the lining of 
his waistcoat, and slapped his chest with a knowing wink, 
as he buttoned the waistcoat up. “Rumbold shall lock this 
up to-night in some safe hiding-hole or other, and to-mor¬ 
row I’ll take him to Wheatstone in the character of Old 


262 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Dog Tray. With such a mastiff at his heels a man can face 
his enemy. Give me a lift to his place on the Green instead 
of taking me to London. You can drop me near the step¬ 
ping-stones that cross the Tolley Brook. The water barely 
wets the stones/' cried Braby, laughing wildly, “or I 
wouldn’t cross ’em for a pocketful of sovereigns to-night! 
For fear the Brook might rise over my head and swallow 
me up with my Fortune. What did you say, Sophy? No 
whispering with my friends!” 

“I was asking this decent man,” said Petcher, who had 
spoken in an undertone to Faggis, “to warn you to keep 
from the tap to-night, if you’d have a clear head by day. 
Because you’re the worst enemy you have, be the other who 
he may be. So good night to you, Mr. Wilfrid, and 
another good night to your wife.” 

“Good night to yo’,” said Malvina, moving her lips 
stiffly. 

“We have never met before,” said Petcher, “nor may 
we meet again. I have no grudge laid up against you, nor 
you against me, I fancy. Good night to you, boy!” Her 
sharp glance went to Stephen, hanging in the back¬ 
ground. “Going by your looks, you’re your mother’s son. 
Maybe ’tis as well for you.” 

“Don’t waste your breath on the boy,” said Braby, 
shrugging his thin shoulders. “A straight-made, clean¬ 
skinned young clodpoll enough, as far as he goes, I’ll grant. 
But nothing to carry one’s family name to a Public School 
and Oxford, and make swell friends, and hold his own 
among gentlemen, as a gentleman should. It’s a thorn in 
my flesh, and a rankling one. Don’t let us talk of it!” 

“Now, as Heaven’s my judge,” returned Petcher, 
throwing back her shawl to stare at him, “I have heard 
those words in that very tone, spoken by your father of 
you. You’re a chip of th’ old block, that you are—though 
you’d like best to deny it! There’s another one as like to 
you—though not bearing the name of Braby,—as one rain¬ 
drop’s like another, or two peas out o’ one pod. Maybe 
you’ll meet her to-morrow!” She went out with a sour 
nod to him. 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 263 

“Been eatin’ lemons with a steel fork, she ’as,” said 
Faggis, looking after her. 

“She’s a cankered soul,” said Braby, arranging his 
slovenly garments. “Why on earth have you swaddled up 
your head like an old Gipsy woman?” 

“For toothache, Mister,” returned Faggis, “to which I 
’ave bin subject from a kid.” 

“Oh! ... I suppose you’re uncommonly well aware, 
you have rendered me a service,” said Braby, arranging his 
tawdry cravat in front of the looking-glass. “Well! you 11 
be rewarded handsomely. I suppose you have no doubts 
of it? Meanwhile, what do you say to a drop? There’s a 
bottle on the cupboard shelf.” 

“Not none for me, nor none for you if you’ll take 
advice,” returned the hawker. “The closer you ’ugs the 
tea-kettle just now, the better, I should say. Wot about 
this Lift? Will you ’ave it or not?”^ 

“A word to my wife and I’m with you,” said Braby, 
reaching down his hat from a peg and signing to Stephen 
for his stick. “Take the boy outside. ... A minute’s 
enough.” 

“Make it a dozen, Governor, I shall want a minute or 
so myself,” said Faggis, glancing at Malvina with concern 
imprinted on the visible part of his honest brick-red face, 
“to put some bits o’ Furniture off my Barrer into your 
woodshed. Which I bought this mornin’ at Brabycott, but 
’ave objections to carry in’ away.” 

“I dunnot unnerstand yo’,” protested Malvina faintly. 
“Hanna yo’ bought th’ sticks as yo’ say, an’ paid yo’r brass 
fur’em?” 

“Correct. I bought the harticles,” admitted Mr. Fag¬ 
gis, “but the Party as sold the goods to me made the mis¬ 
take o’ fergettin’ as they belonged to another Party. An’ 
the Party as wot they belongs to being your hown Gover¬ 
nor, p’raps you won’t raise no objection to my leavm of 
’em'’ere? No Risk wotever bein’ attached to the transac¬ 
tion,” continued Mr. Faggis, “as the Fire Assurance 
Com’ny’s Agent said when he took the seven-an -six. An 
give the Policy to the hold lady who ad er cookin done 


264 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

at the baker’s, and never ’lowed no fires nor lights in the 
’ouse for fear of Accidents. As for some Chaney I bought 
from ’ere along o’ some other Antigreeks, I sold it to a 
long-haired gent as took it away in a keb. But the cupboard 
an’ the Clock with the Moon an’ the Ship, I’ll bring back 
inside of a fortnit, askin’ you kindly to excoose delay, me 
being engaged elsewheres.” 

Perhaps some warmth of sympathy hidden under his 
Cockney shrewdness thawed the numbed heart of the 
woman, for her frozen eyes grew soft. She said in a voice 
more like her own: 

<f Put th’ things in the woodshed if yo’ will, theer be 
plenty room to spare fur ’em. But fur th’ things yo’ 
took from here, I canna’ pay yo’ back. No penny o’ th’ 
money touched my han’s, so I am clear o’ wrong to yo’.” 

“There’s no question of that, Missus!” 

She went on as though she had not heard: 

“Th’ clock wi’ the moon and the sailin’ ship, an’ th’ cup¬ 
board, an’ they bits o’ crockery—wer’ more worth to me 
than the grandest goods as iver came new fro’ th’ shops. 
But they’re nowt to me, but lumber, now! Like the huz- 
bush growin’ by this door, as were nobbut a Queen’s nose¬ 
gay; no rose that ever blowed, I thowt, could ha’ a sweeter 
smell. But th’ day ha’ gone fur me to think or feel in any 
such-like fash’n. Good night t’ yo’, master, and thank yo’ 
fur yo’r kindness to th’ boy.” 

“Been kind to the boy, has he?” commented Braby 
sourly, as the door closed behind the hawker and Stephen 
at the hawker’s heels. “A downy bird. Perhaps he 
guessed that kindness was a good investment? Perhaps all 
these years he has had an idea where the Will was hid 
away. Though I’ve known that old carved escritoire of 
my father’s since my babyhood, and never dreamed of false 
bottoms to any of the drawers. Not that it matters now !” 

Following his strange wont of thinking aloud, he had 
asked himself these questions. But Malvina’s voice now 
answered him with a strange flat tonelessness: 

“Theer’s nowt that matters now, no more.” 

“We’ve seen the landfall of Hope rise up out of an ocean 
of misery,” Braby returned, “but Everything matters in- 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 265 

femally now!” He could look at her and speak to her 
again, in his old contemptuous manner, softened in the 
present instance by a touch of patronage. “He sends to 
me! He’ll come to terms, Greg Grundall the Usurper!—• 
He’ll never let the Chancery Case re-open if he’s wise. 
Pitch the land after the money!—the helve after the 
hatchet!” He began to pace up and down the room, a 
favourite habit with him. “He’ll temporize and I’ll dictate. 

By G-! I can hear myself talking: ‘Brabycott, a sum 

down, and two thousand a year, for the present, under¬ 
stand!’ . . 

His sallow face showed two blazing spots over the hag¬ 
gard cheekbones. His black eyes flared with a crazy light, 
he tore off his hat and threw it down. He threw down his 
stick beside the hat, to free his arms for gesturing, and 
went rhapsodizing on, as he paced the carpetless floor. 

“I choose to be reinstated at once. You hear me, sir?— 
you hear me? Fully and completely, in the eyes of one 
and all. The House got ready—servants engaged. A cor¬ 
dial, respectful reception of the bearer of the honoured 
name—restored to his station and rank. . . .” He wheeled 
and went to the cupboard-shelf where he kept his bottle of 
spirits, and poured out a three-finger dram, and tossed it 
down his throat. “Ha, ha! That strings the nerves,” he 
said. “But still, I mean to be careful. Not too many sips 
between the cup and the lips. By Heaven! I’m making 
verse.” 

He put away the bottle and the glass, and came back and 
sat on the table. Malvina had moved when he had, and 
seated herself in a chair. There was a basket near her on 
a shelf with some socks she had been darning. Absently 
she took up one of these, and spread it on her hand. 

“Throw that away!” said Braby, suddenly, and snatched 
the patched and ill-shaped footwear and threw it on the 
fire, chuckling at her face of dismay. “You’re a lady now. 
You take your place in the County with the best of them! 
Beauty like yours carries far, though its owner is ignorant 
as a stone. As for the boy, if a clodpoll as I’ve said—he’s a 
handsome, strong young animal. ’Gad! take the three of 
us as we are, we’re worth looking at, after all!” 



266 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Warm rain dropping on the stone to which he had just 
now likened her, would have done no more to melt it than 
these surly compliments of his. 

She had uttered a faint cry when he had snatched the 
sock and thrown it on the glowing embers, where it lay, 
charring and giving out a smell of burning wool. Now 
her eyes ignored it, and her face showed nothing of the 
housewifely impulse urging her,—as it blackened and 
shrivelled with a crepitating sound—to snatch it from the 
fire. “Come, ’Vina!” The fumes had made Braby cough. 
He took out his cheap smart handkerchief and wiped some 
moisture from his eyes. “Forgive before I go. I am 
ashamed of what I’ve done. I am degraded in my own 
eyes no less than in yours—I swear it! Haven’t you a 
word of pardon for a genuine penitent?” 

No answer came. He glanced at her, and wondered, 
Ts she thawing?’ and felt a sort of fear of her because she 
was so still. But she would forgive. . . . She had always 
forgiven. He went on now more smoothly: 

“I never believed—never thought. ... We won’t go 
into that again. . . . But I realize the baseness,—I wallow 
in compunction. Fortune’s kickball—a branded Cain—a 
kind of family scapegoat with every hand against me I’ve 
been since I was four years old. Who knows it better 
than yourself?” 

He paused. A strange voice came from the stiff lips of 
the icy mask before him: 

“ ‘Cain,’ do yo’ call yo’rself. ... It wer’ Cain as hated 
of his brother. . . . Yo’ ha’ hated yo’r father an’ yo’r sis¬ 
ter, an’ now yo’ hates yo’r son. ‘Fortune’s kickball.’ . . . 
If yo’ ha’ bin that, I ha’ bin yourn, I reckon!” 

His jaw dropped. Astounding that she should speak 
in this wise. If a stone, such as he had called her, had 
found human speech to upbraid him, he could hardly have 
been more startled. He stared at her. She went on: 

“The Good Book tells us to forgive unto seventy times 
an’ seven. I’ve overed that, yo’ knows full well, in my 
dealin’s wi’ th’ man yo’ be. We ha’ bin poor. Bitter poor, 
but we’d ha’ wanted nothin’ if yo’d but ha’ done some 
honest work, an’ kept away from Drink.” 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 267 


“I own it! I spent your money. I have been a drunk¬ 
ard and a waster!” He struck his forehead and tossed up 
his hands as though throwing ashes on his head. “Mad 
fool! To risk a love like yours. But think it madness, 
’Vina! Be charitable—you are that, Heaven knows!—and 
make the best of me. Have I no redeeming virtues? . . . 
My father’s money has been wasted, but the estate has been 
paying solidly ever since the case began. When Grundall 
spits up his profits—be sure that I shall squeeze him!—we 
should find ourselves—take my word!—well-to-do, if not 
rich. ... Is there nothing noble,—nothing fine in my eag¬ 
erness to share with you? With you, who have halved my 
poverty. Think! Think, my girl, and say!” 

“I ha’ thowt ...” 

She rose up from her broken chair, once damaged by 
his tipsy violence. He had never known her handsomer or 
realized her to be so tall. 

“I ha’ thowt while I ha’ setten here. . . . Theer’s much 
as I ha’ borne from yo\ Yo’re no sweet nosegay, Braby, 
man, to lie in a cleanly breast. But for the oath I swore 
to God to be a faithful wife to yo’, dunnot yo’ think as 
long before this I’d ha’ married my foot to th’ road! Left 
yo’, wi’ th’ boy yo’ hates fur no reason but his love fur 
his mother, as th’ Lord put into his bonny li’l heart to 
save her fro’ breakin’ her own.” 

“What’s this? . . . ’Vina! do I hear my wife? . . .” 

Consternation was written on his visage. The image 
he had reared of himself had rocked and crumbled down. 
In his own eyes he had ever been the King and she the 
beggar’s daughter, lifted by condescending love to share 
Cophetua’s throne. She went on: 

“I ha’ forgi’en yo’ over an’ again, an’ little thanks ha’ 
got fur it. An’ as theer be One sin th’ Lord winnot ower- 
look, I reckons as theer be another one a wife canna’ 
pardon her husband. But—swear off drink for good an 
all, an’ put yon Will in the fire, an’ I’ll forgive yo’r wrong 
to me, though I canna’ promise to forget. Choose now, 
Braby. ’Tis yo’r last chance!” 

He muttered something incoherent. 

“Choose quick,” she said, and her deep, sweet voice filled 


268 The Pipers of the Market Place 

the twilit, firelit room. Her great grey eyes were starry, 
her worn garments took on richness from the splendour 
of the body that their threadbare fabric clothed. And the 
scales fell from the dullard’s eyes, and he realized his blind- 

Was this the simple creature who had borne abuse and 
blows? This the meek partner of his bed, the neglected 
drudge of his household? This goddess cloaked with red- 
gold hair, whose high head neared the joists above. . . . 
As he hugged the parchment buttoned in his breast, he 
was stung with perverse desire. 

“I’ll have you and the money too, my wife!” He nodded 
at her gaily. There was something of his old lost self in 
the bold, gay, laughing look. ‘Til teach you to forgive the 
past. I’ll drink no more, by Heaven! But if you leave 
me, as you hint you’ll do, and shame me before my equals 
—I’ll burn the ship to the waterline. That’s in the Braby 
blood!” 

Then he went out. Like a woman in a dream, she lis¬ 
tened to the sounds of his departure, a word or two ex¬ 
changed with Faggis, and the slamming of the garden- 
gate. There was a puff of dew-wet fragrance from the lilac 
overhanging the gateway. Then wheels jolted on the rutted 
way that led out of the wheatacres; and Stephen rushed 
in, slamming the door, and charged at his Masterpiece. 

“Eh, Stevey, Steve! ...” 

Perhaps his rough, impetuous hug thawed the Arctic 
snows of her bosom. For she cried out, and swayed like a 
stately beech sawn through—and fell upon her knees. And 
wept and wept, with her long arms flung across her homely 
supper-table, and her face hidden between her arms, such 
tears as are not good to shed. 

She stanched the rush of those terrible tears, presently, 
for the sake of Stephen, who clung to her and begged her, 
through his own tears, not to cry. . . . “My own, own 
lad! My Stevey dear!” she said as they clasped each other, 
and Stephen was happy, for the gulf was bridged that had 
parted them for so long. 

As she said this for the twentieth time, with her cheek 
upon his forehead, comforted at this last and worst, by 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 269 

the feel of his arms about her waist, the deepening dark¬ 
ness warned her of the neglect of a household duty. An 
act repeated till its use had lost significance. 

This was the lighting of her little lamp and the setting 
of it on the window-sill. She performed these acts me¬ 
chanically, and raised her hand to the blind. As she touched 
the cord to lower it, a strange dizziness made the well- 
known room gyrate and swim about her, and a stranger 
inward shock and thrill confirmed her secret fears. 

She was to bear another child to Braby, the vile and 
faithless. To carry the shrined secret of an unborn soul 
while she toiled for herself and her boy. Well! she would 
have to welcome the babe, poor helpless stray from Beyond 
There. . . . And being a woman of heroic mould, she 
strung herself to the task. 


IO 

The lamp had burned for three nights more before there 
came a sign from Braby, with the stooping of Rumbold’s 
high, grizzled head under the lintel of the cottage door. 
The wheelwright with the carved mahogany face was 
dressed as though it were Sunday. 

“I come wi’ a message, Mrs. Braby, ma’am,” he said as 
she offered him a chair. 

It seemed that for once a castle in the air had proved 
to have solid foundations. Gregson Grundall had chosen 
to disgorge rather than go back into Court. Eighteen hun¬ 
dred a year and the House were at the disposal of Braby, 
so long as the Will remained unproved. . . . Presently he 
would receive more. . . . Meanwhile, a substantial sum of 
money had been placed by Grundall to his credit in the 
High Marnet branch of the Hertfordshire and Middlesex; 
Bank. The Will remained in Rumbold’s care, Rumbold 
being Secretary of the Tolleymead Workmen’s Benefit Club, 
and owner of an ancient seven-locked safe in which the 
Club funds were stored. 

Malvina waited for the rest. 

More followed, with the production of a tidy roll of 
notes and some gold from the shabby leather pouch that 


270 The Pipers of the Market Place 

lived in Rumbold’s trousers’ pocket. He laid the money 
on the table and delivered his message therewith. 

Mr. Braby sent his devoted love to his wife and their 
son Stephen, and begged them to purchase everything re¬ 
quired, and join him at Brabycott House. He urged them 
not to spare expense to present a creditable appearance. . . . 

“So as he wunnat be ashamed o’ us,” said Malvina in 
her calm, grave voice. “Ay. That would be a backset 
for th’ man, to be disgraced at th’ beginnin’. Take back 
yon money i’ yo’r hand, an’ tell him he’ll be spared.” 

Rumbold, seeing her immovable, swept the money up 
and dropped it, with as much respect for the valuable stuff 
as though it had been a pinch of screws, back into his old- 
world leather pouch, and thrust the pouch back into his 
pocket and got up on his long corduroyed legs to take his 
old-fashioned leave. 

“This means, ma’am, that you’re not in the mind to* 
share your husband’s fortune?” 

“Nobbut it isna’ kind o’ him to offer it,” she said. “Yo’ll 
thank him for his wife an’ boy. But Steve an’ me we 
stops here.” 

“Braby should make an allowance for your keep.” 

“Nay, that’s again my notion. I’ll pay th’ rent as ’fore¬ 
times,” said Malvina in decided tones. “Me and Steve’ll 
live here an’ addle our bread as we’ve bin allays used to. 
Braby’ll not need to worrit—if he do. ... I shunna’ think 
he would! Good day to yo’, Master, wi’ my thanks fur 
being so true a friend to him.” 

“He’s got a truer in yourself,” said Rumbold. “An’ that 
he knows. Deep down in the bottom of his heart he knows 
it, Mrs. Braby.” 

“Has he a heart ?” she could have asked. But his faith¬ 
ful champion went on: 

“He have queer ways of expressing of hisself, have Mr. 
Wilfrid always. But he’s none so mindset or so warped 
as he don’t valley his wife.” 

“None will ever want for your good word,” she said, 
with her rare sweet smile for him. 

“Nay, I think you’re a mindset body yourself,” said the 


How Fortune Turned Her Wheel 271 

wheelwright, rubbing his chin. “Don’t carry away the 
notion as I think you’re actin’ wise-like.” 

“I’ll fare to hope,” she returned to him, “as yo’ll niver 
think no worse. Fur my reasons, Braby knows ’em. Be 
that all yo’ was to say to me?” she asked, as Rumbold 
coughed behind his hand and shuffled his big feet on the 
floor. 

“There were a tail-like to the message, ma’am.” 

Perspiration stood on his upper lip and his seamed ma¬ 
hogany visage was furrowed into deeper lines by sheer be¬ 
wilderment. 

“Would it,” she said to help him out, “be onnything 
about Forgiveness?” 

“Ay, yea!” the wheelwright acquiesced, “that would have 
been the word. Mr. Braby he laid on me to say as he 
bore ye no grudge for anything; and ye might count as 
he truly forgave everything there were to forgive.” 

“Now that wer’ Christian of th’ man!” she said in her 
mellow accents, with a spark of humour in her great grey 
eyes and the dimple showing in her cheek. “Have he for¬ 
given yo’ as well for all th’ harm yo’ done hirn?” 

“Now dang my eyes for a dratted old fool!” cried the 
wheelwright, “for telling ye that. By-rights you’d not 
shake hands with me when I bid ye good day, Mrs. Braby ? 

For answer she held out to him her large, work-hard¬ 
ened, but still beautiful hand. w 

“Here’s a message for Braby when yo’ sees him next., 
She pointed to the frontward window. “Tell him^as th’ 
light wer’ burnin’ theer th’ night he went away. An’ ivera’ 
night while here I be, my han’ will set it yonder, nobbut 
it niver keeps a man from stumblin’ in th’ dark. But till 
my dyin’ day he’ll see no change in me, said Malvina. 
“Fur that money be poison in my eyes, an’ I will touch 

it none!” , 

Furrows deepened in Rumbold’s forehead. His blue- 
shaven jaws set grimly and the huge brown hand that 
held her own closed on it with a crunching grip. But the 
water stood in his eyes, not hers, and when he made his 
old-world bow, he turned away his face. Seeing in him 


272 The Pipers of the Market Place 

a faithful soul, torn between two friendships and two loy¬ 
alties, be sure she liked him none the worse when he car¬ 
ried his tall body away. His belief in Braby, not for the 
first time, came to her assistance. Not all evil, or could 
this good man have championed him so. 


Booh the Fourth: 

HOW TREACHERY TURNED THE TABLES AND LOVE 
WENT OUT AT THE DOOR, AND STEPHEN SHOULDERED 
HIS BURDEN AND THE PIPERS PIPED NO MORE 



Book the Fourth: how treachery turned 

THE TABLES AND LOVE WENT OUT AT 
THE DOOR, AND STEPHEN SHOULDERED 
HIS BURDEN AND THE PIPERS PIPED NO 
MORE 


I 


F IVE months after the finding of the lost Will in the 
escritoire from the library at Brabycott, hidden away 
between the double bottoms of the drawer that tumbled out, 
Stephen’s mother had altered strangely in countenance as 
in figure. Many nights the boy had wakened to hear her 
pacing the floor. 

Physical suffering in one so strong, so superbly health¬ 
ful and vigorous, bewilders the patient who suffers and 
daunts those others who look on. What Malvina could 
not hide, Stephen presently noticed. What she did not 
tell he guessed at, helped by the knowledge of thirteen 


years. 

There came a night of horror on the heels of a day of 
anguish. 

“Let me go fur th’ doctor, mother/’ he had sobbed. 
“You be mortal bad, fur sure.” 

“ ’Twill be ten shillin’, or twelve, maybe, out o’ the li’l 
wee box in the bedstead,” said Malvina, who kept their 
savings stowed away in this queer little hiding-hole, “an’ 
they shillin’s will be wanted fur other needs, I reckon.” 
She set her lips, and her face was wrung and twisted by 
a spasm of pain. 

“Bid me fetch Mrs. Pover to ye then!” begged Stephen. 

But Malvina was adamant. 

“Yo’ shanna’ trouble her. Isn’ Pover nigh death’s door 
wi’ the chill upon his chest? Nay, I’ll do as I ha’ done 
before. Remember what I’ve telled yo’. ’Tis a fine night 
275 


276 The Pipers of the Market Place 

an’ ’twill hurt yo’ none to spend it under the stars. Listen 
for the Church clock strikin’ One, then come back an’ knock 
at th’ window.” She pointed to the window in the south¬ 
ward wall, near which stood the four-post bed. . . . “If I 
raps back wi’ this here stick as I shall keep along wi’ me, 
yo’ can come in. ... If I gives no sign—go to Pover’s. 
That be all!” 

And she had thrust his supper into his hand, and driven 
him from the threshold, and shut the door and steeled her¬ 
self in loneliness to face her woman’s hour. 

He who loved her could do nothing at all but what she 
had forbidden. He disobeyed her in so far that he hung 
about in the near vicinity of their home. Until with the 
wearing of the time came the flood-tide of such anguish 
as forces its way, in words or sounds, through the barriers 
of the Will. And the boy beat wildly on the door and heard 
her sternly answer: 

“Yo’ shanna’ come! Be off wi’ yo’!” and cry again on 
God. 

And then, with his fingers in his ears to shut out that 
terrible moaning, he was running through the wheatacres 
with the night wind in his face and in his hair. Sobbing 
as he ran and crying, like some young, lost, wandering 
spirit, sometimes upon his mother and at other times on 
God. . . . 

He was over some wire and amongst unfriendly trees 
against the boles of which he bruised himself, and brambles 
that tripped his stumbling feet and tore his hands and 
clothes; and then he had struggled through a quickset 
hedge at cost of more rents and scratches, and was on 
a broad white highway that he knew as the Great North 
Road. 

A lane debouched on the opposite side of the smooth, 
hard-beaten highway, and at its end were wide, white 
gates, and lamps that winked red and green. The lamps 
belonged to Sowgate, the last station before East Mar- 
net. And the white gates were shutting all by themselves 
in a weird, uncanny way. And then—with an ear-splitting 
shriek and a roar that shook Stephen’s heart in his body, 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 277 

an Express bound south for the Terminus rushed by, belch¬ 
ing fire and steam. . . . 

“Mother!—mother! Oh, where be God?” 

He broke out again, crying and running towards where 
the shining metals of the iron road reflected the winking 
lamps. . . . All his world lay ruined round him, there 
was no hope left for Stephen, with that voice clamouring 
in his ears that he did not know for his own. . . . 

Night and his agony of fear had driven the boy demented. 
He screamed like a rabbit harried by a fox as he scoured 
along the lane. He could never go back to the cottage, he 
knew, because his mother lay dead there. But the white 
gates were opening again, for a cart to cross the line. . . . 

“Be that th’ last up-train to-night ?” the carter called to 
another man who leaned from the window of a signal-box, 
with his shirt-sleeved elbows on the sill. 

“Yes, and the last Express for th’ North comes along 
in ten minutes,” said the signalman. ... 

Stephen passed in the shadow of the cart through the 
gates of the level-crossing, turned to his right and ran 
along the cinders of the permanent way. Stumbling down 
upon his knees, he stooped his ear towards the metals, and 
the loudening hum of the north-bound Express came out 
of the distance beyond. 

His Masterpiece was dead. She had called on God, 
and He had forgotten to answer. She could never come 
back, but one could go to her if one lay down and just 
waited for the Express. He stammered through the simple 
prayer she had taught him when he was a baby, while the 
faint thin drone of the metals sang of the coming of the 
iron-wheeled Death. Of the moral turpitude of the act 
he planned the boy comprehended nothing, though he knew 
that people who killed themselves were called by an ugly 
name. 

Suicides. ... , , 

There was a hiss in the word that was like the rush 
of an adder through grass or moss, or ground ivy stirred by 
recklessly-treading feet. There was another curious-sound¬ 
ing word the Coroner tacked on to a suicide at least when 


278 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Mr. Wix had read of them from the newspaper at The 
Pure Drop.' . . . 'And the Finding was No Accident. 
The Deed was Done Deliberate. The Verdict unanimously 
given by the Jury was Felo de se. y 

Stephen opened the neck of his coarse blue shirt and 
settled his head more easily, as out of the blackness to his 
right came a shrill ear-splitting screech. Two dull red holes 
punched in the night, changed to blazing ruby headlights. 

. . . And the metals were not droning now,—they were 
sounding like a beaten gong. . . . 

“Boom — Boom — Boom — Boom! Boom — Boom — 
Boom—BOOM!” . . . 

Death was coming. He screamed in hideous fear—tore 
his ear from the cold, smooth iron—and rolled over the 
banked side of the down-line into a railway cabbage-plot. 

White signals fell, and points clicked over, and a bell 
clanged in the station, as the north-going Express thundered 
overhead in a cloud of fiery steam. 

Then Stephen got up, shaken and bruised, with no appe¬ 
tite left for suicide—climbed the tarred rail-fence, crossed 
a fallow field, and got back on the Great North Road. 

But when the wheatacres were re-crossed and the cottage 
loomed dark against the darkness, with a faint gleam 
showing through the down-drawn blind of the window on 
the left of the door, his mouth dried up, and his heart 
knocked hard within his clammy bosom. . . . What was 
waiting for Stephen there, across the threshold of Home? 

* * * * * 

The light was burning in the old place on the sill of 
the frontward window, a dozen inches or so beneath the 
edge of the lifted blind. All had been dark when he had 
left. . . . The feeble flame gave him courage to open the 
gate of the garden, steal up the path, and timidly touch the 
handle of the door. . . . 

Then out of the silence behind the door came a sweet 
voice softly crooning, to a tune that had the rocking rhythm 
that marks a cradle-song. A woman singing in Stephen’s 
home, with a voice that was not his mother’s. . . . So, they 
had taken her away. . . . His teeth chattered in his head. 


j How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 279 

He dropped on the doorstep and laid his ear to a crack 
in the weather-worn panel. The voice stopped singing, 
and somebody laughed. . . . His Masterpiece! She said: 

“I hannot heerd yon lullaby since Stevey were a litlin’. 
What’s gone o’ the lad, I wonner? ’Tis time he wer’ cornin’ 
home.” 

“Now, now,” said another, older voice, that was not 
the voice of the singer. “You’re anything but fit to talk. 
Lie quiet while I take a look. . . . Maybe the child is there 
outside, with his heart in his mouth, waitin’ . . 

And the bigger of the Two Good Ladies was the one that 
opened the door. 

Not until later did the boy recognize the habit of the 
Order of Nazareth in their blue-lined hoods and their long 
black veils, the starched white guimpes framing their rosy, 
gentle faces, the pleated garments of dull black serge, 
touched in the folds with blue. . . . 

It seemed that the Sisters were on one of their rounds, 
collecting alms for their House at Hammersmith, and were 
to have slept at a friend’s, not far from Tolleymead New 
Station Works. They had sent a message by a labouring 
man to explain the reason of their non-arrival, and so 
were free to give themselves, unhindered, to the matter 
in hand. 

***** 

“I winna trouble strangers, ma’am,” Malvina had panted 
in her extremity. How often was Stephen to hear the tale 
from his mother in days to come. . . . 

“Nor need ye, woman,” said the elder nun, whose name 
was Sister Bridget, “seeing you with a couple of friends 
to the right and left of ye. ’Twill not be the first babe I ve 
helped into the world—nor the last one—take my word 
for it!” 

“The Lord reward yo’!” said Malvina, yielding to those 
ministering hands. 

***** 

“ ’Tis a girl, dear,” said Sister Antony, touching her 
rosy apple cheek to the drained white face on the pillow. 


280 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Another lamb for the dear Lord's fold, another lily for 
Mary's field." 

“An' healthy an’ strong," said the elder nun, through 
a thin, strange caterwauling, “the way she’ll be walking 
on her wee little feet and talking before you’d turn round." 

“And all that fluff of black hair she has-” cooed Sister 

Antony, smoothing it. 

“'Twill come off," said the elder nun sagely. “Hark! 
Was that wheels in the road ?" 

They had sent for the doctor, who was away at a case, 
and the wheels belonged to his dogcart. But the doctor 
found nothing to do but commend what had already been 
done. 

“And there’ll be to pay him, and I hanna' th’ brass," 
sighed the patient, when ^Esculapius had departed. . , . 

“Leave that care for to-morrow," said the younger of 
the two nuns, “shut your eyes, and just let yourself rest." 

“But th’ money!" Malvina began again. “Th' money 
I’m owing th' doctor! Theer wer’ nowhat o' reason to 
worrit th’ man, an’ I cannowt be sparin’ th' brass. Theer’s 
little over an’ above the bit put by for th' landlord. An' 
never will I meddle wi’ that!" She shut a resolute mouth. 

“The Lord has sent money," said the younger nun, “for 
the doctor and what more is wanted. ’Tis odd, when you 
take all else from Him, you’d stick at what you’d call a bit 
o’ brass. Talk no more now, for the baby’s sake!" 

“And the boy’s," said the other Sister. “We’ve his 
supper in the oven now, keeping hot along with our own. 

. . . For we’re stopping for the night with you, nor will 
we think to leave you till some decent body can be found to 
look to your needs and the child’s. Here comes the boy! 
. . . I hear a step outside there in the garden. Sister An¬ 
tony, open the door." 

“Why, here he is, Sister, no larger than life," said the 
voice that had been singing, and a face that matched the 
sweetness of the voice smiled down on the bewildered boy. 
But Stephen's eyes were not for her. There was his mother 
in the four-post bed, paler than he had ever seen her, and 
with great dark circles round her eyes, that gave her an 
unfamiliar air. 



How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 281 

“Eh, my own lad!” she called to him. “Did yo’ think 
yo’r mother had forgot yo’ ?” 

But Stephen could only sob and say: 

“Eh, mother, you’re alive after all!” 

“Fiddle!” said the elder of the Sisters, stooping with 
pinned-back habit to open Malvina’s oven, which exhaled 
a heavenly smell. She drew forth a well-browned shep¬ 
herd’s pie as she continued: “Kiss your mother, child, and 
then sit down to your supper. Sure, ’twas lucky, Sister 
Antony, we’d meat and potatoes in the bag.” 

“And luckier still that the Wheatstone folks told us of 
the short-cut through the wheatacres,” returned the sweet¬ 
voiced, sweet-faced nun, stirring cocoa into milk, “or we’d 
not have passed the little house, the way we heard a body 
crying, and knocked at the door, and then made bold to 
walk in without being asked.” 

One Sister slept in the attic while the other watched 
with the patient, and so they took it, turns about all through 
the rest of the night. From his blanket lair beside the 
fire, Stephen knew them coming and going. . . . He had 
never slept so sweetly since the Shadow had darkened their 
home. 

In the end the Sisters stayed three days, doing their 
rounds between whiles. What sunshine did they not bring 
with them. What laughter and gentle jests. What a 
reverent hush filled the living-room when together they 
said their Rosary, or knelt for the length of three Aves at 
the sound of the Angelus bell. For the triples rang from 
Tolleymead Church tower as they ring in other villages, all 
over this our England up to the present day. And when 
they parted from their new-made friends, what a void they 
left behind them,—if partly bridged with promises of com¬ 
ing back again. 

Malvina would have named the baby after them, but 
neither of the Sisters would hear of it. One name there 
was for a girl, they said, and that their favourite one. But 
Mrs. Braby would please herself. Well, but what was their 
favourite name? . . . And what would it be but Mary. 
. . . And so it was decided, to every one’s content. 

The question had been settled in Stephen’s case by re- 


282 The Pipers of the Market Place 

sort to the Sortes Biblicce, a method of divination in favour 
with Malvina’s motherly friend. You thrust a pin between 
the leaves and opened the volume at random. Where the 
pin indicated, there you chose your child’s baptismal name. 

When it came to the question of the baby’s second name, 
Stephen, being sent for the Bible, brought The Pilgrim’s 
Progress by a mistake, only realized when they opened at 
the pin. The last two words of the paragraph appended 
here were indicated: 

“Indeed,” quoth she, “I cannot stay, for I am in haste 
to end my journey. Long have I dwelled with my husband 
and my sons in the City of Destruction, but he is gone before 
us, and we are on our way thence.” 

So ‘Mary Waythence’ were the names whispered by her 
godparents to the Rector, who affixed them to little Miss 
Braby without turning a hair. 

2 

Mary Waythence was a fortnight old when the Faggis’s 
called at the cottage. Some little bird may have carried 
the news to Lower Holloway. 

Mrs. Faggis, glorious to behold in a bonnet trimmed 
with feathers and flowers, and a Paisley shawl of many 
hues, brought with her a covered basket, containing many 
comforts for Malvina and the child. And so genuine was 
the kindness of the homely soul, a worthy mate for her 
husband, that Malvina could not find the heart to refuse 
her offered gifts. 

With the eatables in the basket came some little sets of 
baby-clothes, laid away in lavender years before, and never 
wanted again. 

“Which Them above knowed best, my dear,” said Mrs. 
Faggis, “though it would have been a comfort, when our 
dear boy were called away, if another had took his place. 
Not that another could or would. But his little bed in our 
attic has stood there empty through the years that have 
wrinkled his mother’s face.” 

“ ’Tis a comely face, wrinkles or none, an’ hullsome as 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 283 

a winter-apple,” said Malvina, stating the simple truth as she 
touched the good woman's hand. 

“And you’re a Beauty, that you are, and so I tell you 
plainly,” returned the Missis, beaming over her brilliant 
bonnet-strings. “And you and me are friends, I hope! My 
Ben has spoken of you often—and both of us has took 
to your dear boy, Lord bless his bonny face! And so, a 
kindness betwixt friends being nat’ral and not a favour, 
you’ll take what I’m a-going to say as properly you should. 
This toosy-woosy winkum wums, a-lying here as good as 
gold and blowing precious bubbles, ’ud bear me out if she 
could speak,—as I wish you well, my dear. Wouldn’t you, 
my black-eyed blessing!” cried Mrs. Faggis, falling back 
upon admiration of the baby, whenever her womanly tact 
gave hint of thin ice beneath her tread. 

“Dunnot think but I’d ha’ knowed it when I laid my 
eyes upon yo’! Even wi’out the kindness as th’ boy ha’ 
met fro’ yo’!” 

“Little enough, though the darling boy would ever make 
a deal of it. Which brings me to the thing, my dear, I’d 
got it on my mind to say. As its common talk, and couldn’t 
but be, a village being given to gossip, as you and your 
good gentleman have parted company. On a difference of 
opinion regarding the Braby Money,—and differences there 
are in life, gainsay the truth who may. And what is meat 
to one may well be Poison to another, my Great Aunt Gann 
being a living proof, with eating whelks throughout the 
year. Also mussels—whenever possible to smuggle into 
Poplar Workhouse,—which but one would lay me scream¬ 
ing low with hot plates to my front and side. So you’re 
right in choosing Poverty before Wealth, not holding the 
wealth right come by, and Steve do well to cling to you, 
whatever may befall! But do you do right by him and 
yourself to stay on here in Tolleymead, when there’s a open¬ 
ing offered to better both your lives? Don’t answer now. 
Let me prose on in my own uneddicated fashion, as were 
nothing but a Charity-girl when my First throwed his eye 
on me. Running herrands and washing the steps, and clean¬ 
ing a lodging-house kitchen, with every second Sunday out 


284 The Pipers of the Market Place 

and never an hour in the week. And yet able at this time 
o’ day to befriend, in a manner o’ speaking, a noble creetur’ 
like yourself, if she’d but let me, dear! Offer herself and 
her boy a home, for the present at Lower Holloway, having 
empty rooms, and more furnitur’ in the shop than my Ben 
will ever sell. A help in the house you’d be to me, more 
than worth the wage I’d pay you, and the boy could earn his 
keep with Ben till he gets a Market berth. So now you 
know. If you’re vexed with me, you’re not the woman I 
think you. But you ain’t. Is she, my Pudsey-dud, a-smiling 
all over your face?” 

Then there was a silence while Malvina thought, and 
Mrs. Faggis waited. 

“I’ll not deny,” had said Malvina at length, “but ’twould 
be wise to go. An’ a time may come when I’d take for 
Steve the kindly home that’s offered, knowin’ him like to 
be no charge, when once he got a place. But onless us could 
bide together, him an’ me, an’ th’ baby wi’ grateful thanks 
for yo’r goodness, I’d choose th’ Nazareth House.” 

“The Nazareth House at Hammersmith? . . . Were 
that your meanin’, deary ?” 

“Nazareth House be th’ name o’ the place. Where th’ 
Sisters live,” said Malvina, bending her motherly eyes upon 
the sleeping babe at her breast. “ ’Tis full o’ folk both 
old an’ young, men an’ women an’ children. Elsewhere the 
old ’ud be Paupers. Elsewhere the children ’ud be charity- 
brats an’ dressed in charity clothes. But at Nazareth House, 
Poverty be no disgrace, an’ whatever yo’r religion, yo’re 
welcome for love o’ th’ Blessed Poor Man, an’ His Mother, 
as kept His sayings in her heart. So wheniver I take my 
foot in my hand and look my last on th’ wheatacres, ’twill 
be Nazareth House for my lamb and me. For th’ boy-” 

She said no more. 


3 

Subsequently to the confirmation of a rumour which 
had temporarily unhinged the village, the Rector of Tolley- 
mead, whilst shaving, inflicted a gash upon his chin. 
Brought over from Wheatstone by a mounted groom in the 



How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 285 

employ of Mr. Gregson Grundall, a note, delivered by a 
fluttered maid, was the cause of the casualty. 

“Da-ear me!” exclaimed the Rector, applying a towel 
to the effusion. 

“Is anything the matter, dear?” called his lady from the 
adjoining room. 

When she entered with court-plaster, a cobweb and a 
pair of scissors, the Rector, with a lathery countenance, was 
reading for the second time the letter appended below. 

“The Braby Arms, 

“Brabycott, 

“—th May, 1873. 

“Reverend Sir,— 

“Being shortly to enter into ockupation of my Famaly 
Residence I am, until Brabycott House is reddy to receive 
me, established at the above where kindly adress reply. 

“A suitable staff of Servants have been ingaged for 
Brabycott under the suparintendence of Mrs. Sophy Petcher, 
my Housekeeper whose servaces my worthy and respected 
friend Gregson Grundall Esq. has temporarily relinkwished 
in my favour. When all is reddy I shall hope to have the 
honour to receave yourself & lady amongst my earlist gests. 

“As the Pew bilonging to my Familly has not been ocku- 
pied of late years, I shall be oblidged if you will have it 
put in proper repare and renew the cushuns of Saime which 
are in a very dilappadated stait for which Purpose I en¬ 
close the sum of £10 hearwith. 

“I shall with your permission call shoartly at Tolley- 
mead Rectory, and ernestly hope by a reggular atendance 
at Church on Sundays to benefitt by the spiritual teechings 
contaned in your sermons, and the Services which I humbly 
trust no Rittualistic & poapish pracktices will ever be per¬ 
mitted to mar. 

“Meanwhile I should be graitful if you would akord me 
the Benefitt of your Advise upon a mater of a Pressing and 
Delicate nature touching my fammaly rilations & remain, 
“Dear Sir, Faithfully yours, 
“Wilfrid Thomasson Braby 
“Of Brabycott.” 


286 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“l seemed to know the* fellow’s fist,” spluttered the Rector, 
who had reason; having not so long previously committed 
to the flames some dozens of School copybooks inscribed 
in a similarly bold and flourishing roundhand with pre¬ 
cepts riot all uniformly wholesome for the young. “And I 
opened it to find this—arah!—hotch-potch of—of—im¬ 
pudence and assurance. ‘Ritualistic or Popish practices’ 
indeed. Because the choir wear surplices, and turn to the 
East at the Creed! And this from a poaching scoundrel! 
A dissipated, intemperate loafer, who has never set foot 
inside the Church since I have held the living, I believe.” 

“He is one of the Ringers,” said the Rector’s wife, pick¬ 
ing up the crackly enclosure, which had slipped from the 
Rector’s fingers to the floor, and smoothing it carefully 

out. . ] 

“He is one of the Old Ringers. But ringing other people 
in to attend Divine Service is not the same as attending it 
yourself,” said the Rector in his weightiest tones. “And 
this Braby-of the Wheatacres-” 

“Is now Mr. Braby of Brabycott. Through the dis¬ 
covery, the gardener says, of a Will, or-something of the 
sort.” 

“Pish! Even if a Will had been found, it couldn’t have 

been proved so quickly. Do you think this Grundall- 

Have you seen the man?” 

“Don’t speak of him, Reeky dear!” In tender or playful 
moments she addressed her Rector as ‘Reeky.’ “That 
purple man with poppy eyes is one of my chief bugbears.” 

“Strive against prejudice, Clara. Braby appears to 
respect him. What is that paper in your hand ? . . . The— 
arah!—Thank you, my dear!” 

The Rector folded the crackly bank-note and slipped it 
into his note-case. His wife, who had perused the letter, 
enquired: . I 

“Shall you grant what this person asks?” 

“My duty is not to withhold advice from parishioners 
who apply for it.” 

“Perhaps it has to do with his wife,” said the Rectoress 
with feminine intuitiveness. “You know his wife?” 




How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 287 

“By sight, of course. A young woman, extraordinarily 
tall!” 

“And large, Reeky. I may be wrong, but for a woman 
to be of such height and'size does seem to me indelicate. 
Then, too, she has an accent of a frightful kind: Yorkshire, 
or Irish possibly.” 

“H’m! Does Mrs. Braby attend Church?” 

“I am able to answer—no! Not even a Mothers' Meet¬ 
ing, or a Parish Jumble Sale.” 

“Hah!” 

“What she said about the Jumble Sale was told me by 
Pover’s daughter. . . . The one we tried as nursery-maid, 
who didn’t suit at all. . . 

“What did Mrs. Braby—arah!—say, my dear?” 

One attempts to convey a peculiar sound, filling pauses 
in the Rector’s sermons, while he cursorily peeped at the 
MS. notes on the cushion of the pulpit-desk, and employed 
by him with impressive effect in the lapses of ordinary con¬ 
versation. 

“Why, that if she must wear ‘worn-out duds/ and 
‘clouts,’ I think she called them—she preferred her own 
to other folks’.” 

The Rector cleared his throat. 

“Hrr’mph. Would you tell Jenkins to be ready with 
the brougham to take me over to Brabycott at—arah!— 
not before lunch, I think. . . . Two is a favourable hour. 
And I will finish shaving now, and dress, if you will excuse 
me!” The Rector added, as his Rectoress retreated towards 
the door, “So Mrs. Petcher is housekeeper. . . . Do I 
know this Mrs. Petcher? In the service of Mr. Grundall, 
and released to oblige our friend? . . . He wishes to call 
at the Rectory, by the way. You will not be indisposed to 
receive him?” 

“Oh no! But—Reeky—I do hope he will not bring his 
wife!” 

The historian has not on record the actual terms of the 
interview between the Rector of Tolleymead and Braby, 
that blackest of village goats, who sought at the eleventh 
hour to be folded with the sheep. But, despite himself the 


288 The Pipers of the Market Place 

worthy gentleman was impressed when ushered into the 
presence of Braby. Bathing, shaving, fine linen and good 
clothes had made such a difference in the man. 

Moreover, thought occupying private rooms at the inn, 
all green rep and red flock paper, hung with lithographed 
scenes from the Peninsular wars, and pervaded with whiffs 
from the bar,—despite spirituous or beery inducements to 
stray from the arid path of temperance, he was almost 
startlingly sober when the Rector was ushered in. 

“And that fact,” said the Rector confidentially to his 
wife, “has impressed me most profoundly. For, practically, 
it was meeting a stranger. Or, say, a man from whom 
a devil had been cast out.” 

Did no devil glitter mockery through Braby’s black 
eyes as he wove his web of illusion? Was he absent while 
the injured gentleman poured his confidences in the rector¬ 
ial ear ? 

“Sacred and private confidences,” said the Rector, “which 
have filled me—arah!—with compunction, realizing as I 
must that I have misjudged a fellow creature so. As to 
their nature, even to the wife of my—arah!—bosom, I will 
be silent. Only let this be remembered: This man whom 
we have spattered with contempt is more sinned against 
than sinning!” 

“I guessed it from the first,” returned the Rector’s wife, 
who had objected to Mrs. Braby’s size. 

4 

Malvina Braby had disapproved of girls and never wished 
to own one. 

“Maids be muckheaps one and all,” she had been wont 
to declare. “Now a boy’s a boy. Yo’ knows what yo’ 
ha’ got to deal wi’ when yo’ gets one.” You never knew 
what you had got in Waythence. That was her charm. 

Before this maid-babe, born under a sorrowful star, the 
mother fell down in adoration, nor was Stephen jealous 
of her worship, or reluctant to adore. To him the little 
red stranger was a toy; the quaintest of living playthings. 
Prettiness he discovered in her presently, not of ordinary 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 289 

cherub-pattern, all rosy curves of gleaming flesh. She was 
sallow, with black eyes and hair. And though a passionate 
temper and stubborn will increased the likeness to Braby 
that her mother’s eyes had recognized from the first hour 
of her birth—the cottage by the wheatacres was brighter for 
her coming. So much that is heavenly breathes about the 
sacred feebleness of a child. 

And the babe brought gifts in its small shut hands for 
Stephen and Malvina. New ties, new interests for the boy. 
For the woman, a newer care. Another life, derived from 
hers, dependent on her utterly. Needing her every instant, 
for what none else could give. 

The milk of her breasts, the strength of her arm, the 
cherishing warmth of her body. All her lost beauty came 
again, with the joy of being wanted so. She was wonder¬ 
ful to see in these days, now that the hollows of her cheeks 
were filled and their full and gentle oval showed the lovely 
carmine mantling beneath the sun-warmed skin. 

Her great grey eyes spilled radiance, and the noble, 
purely-modelled features were more than ever Demeter’s, 
as she bent over the sleeping child. Though the ashen- 
grey streaks in her wheat-red curls were ever-present testi¬ 
mony to the bitterness of the cup that she had drunk and 
the weight of the sorrows she had borne. 

The baby was nearly four weeks old and the small 
hoard hidden in the bedstead was spent, all save the rent- 
money, when Malvina returned to work, taking her nurs¬ 
ling with her by grace of the mistress of the Dairy, who 
had a tender spot for babies, possessing none of her own. 

She was weary but hopeful on the Saturday noon. Her 
earnings were safe in her pocket, and the sum hoarded 
to pay the rent unbroken in its hiding-place. The farmer’s 
wife had dropped a hint that Stephen might be re-employed 
by the farmer. True, he had vexed the master, but other 
lads were worse. 

So Malvina prepared a little feast against Stephen s ex¬ 
pected homecoming, for he had gone to London to see 
Faggis about a Market job. She set the table for supper, 
undressed and nursed the baby, and laid it down, as clean 
as a flower, in the cradle that had been her son’s. 


290 The Pipers of the Market Place 

The living-room was spotless as its owner now, untainted 
by reek of liquor, and the savage odour of cheap cigars 
that had pervaded Braby’s clothes and breath. And Mal¬ 
vina was fragrant as a meadow in June, and mellow as 
an apple from the orchard where King Pippins and Blen¬ 
heims yet hung upon the boughs waiting a touch of 
frost. 

You can see her by the soft rich yellow light of an after¬ 
noon in November, sitting at her bit of needlework while 
the little creature slept. In an old and oft-washed lavender 
print, with a wide white muslin kerchief covering her 
shoulders, and crossed over her bosom, and knotted at her 
back. 

She was at peace, with worn household things about 
her who craved no new ones, her boy happy in his holiday 
and coming back that night. The baby sleeping in its 
rockered box as though it were a costly cradle, and the 
wages she had earned that week stowed safe in the cup 
on the mantelshelf. 

And yet by that mystic, nameless sense that forewarns 
of coming trouble, as the peasant of the Alps scents the 
avalanche, or the Malay fisher the typhoon, she knew this 
but a breathing-space before another struggle. So a 
swimmer in rough seas might rest between one surge and 
the next. 

She started at the sudden clatter of iron-shod hoofs and 
the bump of wheels upon the cart-track. Over the blind 
of the front window she saw that a carriage had stopped at 
her gate. A low open chaise of the basket kind drawn 
by a meek old pony, and driven by an elderly groom in 
dark green livery. 

The green-liveried groom who drove the trap, a dry¬ 
faced, grey-haired fellow, squeezed to the very edge of 
the seat by the bulk of the man at his side, touched his 
hat respectfully to Malvina as he slipped from under the 
apron, and pushing open the garden gate came up the brick- 
laid path. 

“Who be it?” asked Malvina, appearing on her doorstep. 

“Mr. Grundall over from Wheatstone, ma’am,” returned 
the elderly groom, looking back at the hulking, sprawling 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 291 

shape of the occupant of the carriage, as though entertain¬ 
ing secret doubts whether this was really the fact. 

“My gonnies!” gasped Malvina. “Donnot say as yon be 
th’ Grower!” 

“Him and nobody else,” said the groom. He added 
as the figure in the pony-chaise waved a pair of large black 
flippers, and wagged its head, which was roofed with a hat 
of chimney-pot design: “He’s more a marigold than a 
peony now, and he whispers instead of roaring, the mare 
having damaged his wocal cords when she shook him by 
the neck. An’ he’s got Religion—and got it bad. Yet 
you’ll find, like other people, he’s wonderful little changed 
inside for a man as be so altered out!” 

“What’s come o’ the mare?” 

“He’ve sold her to the butcher at East Marnet. No 
matter how the butcher beats her, poor lass! she’ll get noth¬ 
ing worse than she’s had. / don’t blame the brute myself,” 
said the groom, dropping to a cautious whisper. “ ’Tis 
natural for beasts, as it is for men, to pay back ill-usage 
when they can.” 

“He’s callin’,” said Malvina as the subject of discourse 
uttered a strangled bellow, and gesticulated yet more wildly 
with the flapping black-gloved hands. 

“That’s to say, as if you’ll set him a large-sized chair 
he’ll come inside and speak to you. Don’t seem to notice 
when he swears, it drives him rampin’ wild!” 

And the groom hurried back to the pony-chaise to assist 
his debilitated employer, who had sunk so low in the cush¬ 
ioned back seat that the apron was menacing his chin. Still 
a three-decker chin, but of tallowy hue, and gone flabby 
like the rest of the Grower, whose moppings and mowings 
as his serving-man extracted him from the vehicle, arid set 
his goloshes on the garden-path, were hideous to behold. 

Malvina had duly set the armchair, and profited by the 
slowness of their progress to take unseen from the bed¬ 
stead hiding-place the hoarded quarter’s rent, dropping it 
by an afterthought into the china cup on the mantelshelf 
when another faint bellow reached her ears, and she has¬ 
tened to re-open the door. 

And there was the Grower on two walking-sticks, cursing 


292 The Pipers of the Market Place 

the groom in whispers, for all that his huge splay feet were 
set on the Hard and Narrow Way. . . . 

“Mrs. Braby,”—he raked her with fierce, veinous eyes 
as she dropped her little curtsy,—“I’m coming in,” said 
the gasping croak that alternated with his strangling roar. 
“You, Joyce, put me into that armchair and get out until 

you’re wanted. Drop me—and I’ll flay you, by-” He 

gulped down the rest of the swear. “Well, Mrs. Braby,” 
he resumed, wallowing and grunting as he hauled his black- 
covered, brass-clasped rent-book from the side-pocket of his 
creasy frock-coat. “D’ye guess why I am here ?” . . . 

“Maybe ’twould be to do wi’ the rent,” said Malvina 
in her deep soft accents. “The September quarter’s owin’ 
yo’.” 

“And another month as well. Come, my good woman. 
Why haven’t you paid?” snarled Grundall. She told him 
simply. 

“Fur th’ reason that nobody came fur th’ brass, and I 
were laid up off my feet.” 

“Hah!” 

As the Grower’s savage eyes rolled in the direction of 
the cradle, Malvina moved to the fireplace, and took the 
money from the china cup. 

“Here be th’ brass, master,” she said, tendering the silver 
coins, while retaining her position so as to shield the innocent 
sleeper from his sight. 

“Well, better late than never!” croaked the Grower, 
clutching and pocketing the money. “Get me a pen and 
a dip of ink,” he added in his usual form. “This time I’ll 
overlook delay, but don’t be late again, ma’am! ‘One Pound 
Ten Shillings Duly Received from Mrs. Malvina Braby.’ ” 
He filled in the receipt and the counterfoil, and tore it from 
the book and gave it her, whispering, “But Two Pounds 
Two next time, for the rent is raised, Mrs. Braby. Three- 
and-six per week from now, instead of Half-a-crown.” 

Her heart sank leadenly in her breast and her knees 
so weakened under her, that to the Grower’s secret joy 
she laid her hand on a chair. How meet that ruthless extra 
charge when every nerve was straining to pay the rental 
as it was? Almost she pleaded with this man. 




How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 293 

But through those ugly windows in the face that was yel¬ 
low instead of crimson, something looked back that silenced 
her. He beckoned her to come nearer, and gasped. 

“Why don't you speak up for yourself? Haven't you 
got anything to say to me ?" 

“ 'Say,' master? Nought as I know of." 

“Why not complain?" croaked the Grower. “Protest 
against the rapacity of the landlord, hey? Or have you got 
such a stocking-full of cash that a pound one way or t’other 
don't matter much to you?" 

“It matters so much, as well yo’ knows," she answered 
his creaking whisper, “as th' money I pay to yo' fur rent be 
coined flesh an’ blood!" 

“Do something, then, to make it less," said the Grower 
in his ugly whisper, thrusting his huge body forward as 
he grasped the arms of the easy-chair. He added, seeing 
her quick recoil, and recalling past essays of gallantry 
repelled by Malvina at the length of an exceedingly powerful 
arm, “No, no! I’ve got religion, ma’am! No more of 
mauling women! But the old man’s Will. . . . Braby 
showed it me. . . . Well, where has he got it now?" 

“Didna’ he take it to Wheatstone, when he went over 
wi' Rumbold?" 

The Grower churned his saliva for one rabid moment, and 
croaked: 

“He did, and I read the cursed document and the pair of 
them took it away again. . . . Come! . . . Where has 
Braby hidden it? . . . Can you lay your hands on it, eh? 
... Is anything wickeder than Distrustfulness ? Have I 
been a friend to your husband? Noble? Unselfish? Dis¬ 
interested? Ay? Then treat me as I deserve! 

He wiped his face that was streaming now, with a huge 
white cambric handkerchief that had replaced the vari- 
hued bandannas he had loved to sport, and took off his 
great silk chimney-pot, and mopped the leather lining-guard 
and replaced the hat on his bullet head and wagged the 
head at her. 

“You won’t, Mistress. You're dumb as stone. Well, 
well, I wash my hands of you! And yet I’d made up my 
mind to speak to Braby about the rent. For I ve not put it 


294 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

up on you, mind!—but your husband who owned the free¬ 
hold, and has a fancy to own it again, which my kindness 
can’t withstand. The generous heart will overflow-” 

She cried: 

“Be Braby landlord? . . .” And consternation was in 
her face and her voice beyond control. 

She might have stooped to entreat the Grower, but her 
calm, sane judgment saved her. Even though Braby owned 
the cottage, she was tenant and nothing more. She profited 
by no tainted coin of the dead old slaver’s money. She 
would work her hands to the bone, if need were, to pay the 
extra rent. And if she could not pay, well! well!—beyond 
the cottage doorstep lay the world that she had wandered 
before she met her Fate. 

Now through the soughing in her ears and the beating 
in her bosom came Grundall’s stertorous whisper: 

“You’ll mind that, Mistress, hey? . . .” 

“I ha’ no choice,” she answered him, “to mind it or not 
mind it.” 

“But all the same you’d rather pay next quarter’s rent 
to me. Well, you won’t be able to do that, for Braby has 
the cottage. The devil knows why,” creaked Grundall, “if 
it ain’t to keep his eye on the handsome wife who’s pitched 
her cap over the mill!” 

He rolled his bullet head at her, and gasped as the wide- 
flanged hat-brim made a shiny jet-black halo round his 
puffy yellow face. And despite the fact that his maun- 
derings seemed aimless as the babble of a drunkard, they 
seemed the prelude to something she had waited for many 
days. 

“I know you, ma’am. You can’t fool me with your 
show of honesty and high-mindedness, masking, twixt 
yourself and the bed-post, a stubborn woman’s will. They 
knew in the good old-fashioned days how to deal with trulls 
o’ your sort. Bridles or ducking-stools, by the Lord! We’re 
too tender-hearted now.” 

His eyes were like those of an angry bull, and streaks 
of blackish purple were scrawled upon the background of 
his ugly tallowiness. His wallowings had dragged his collar 
askew and undone his black string necktie. And though 



How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 295 

his grossness burned her blood, there was something piti¬ 
able about the man. It may have been the pity in her eyes 
that stirred his gall to frenzy. He could have spat in her 
colourless face, but he stayed his venom awhile. He would 
bring the angry red into those cheeks before he had finished 
with the woman. . . . What right had a travelling tinker’s 
wench to dignity and pride? 

He whisked out one of the white handkerchiefs that 
had replaced his gaudy bandannas, and mopped his shiny 
countenance and blew his big hooked nose. Such a nose 
as a carpenter’s boy for a joke might saw out of a bit of 
planking. An obstreperous nose, overshadowing a desert of 
bristly upper-lip. Then he stuffed the handkerchief away, 
and whispered, glaring at her: 

“What you think of my dealings in respect of the 
house, you’ll be able to tell your husband.” He hauled 
at the chain of his big gold watch. “I’ve arranged to meet 
him here, for a little family council, and as he dined at the 
Rectory, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he brought the 
reverend gent. A meeting, hey?” He rubbed his hands, 
gloating over the change in her, the quivering of her fea¬ 
tures, and the tumult of her heart. “You’ll find Braby im¬ 
proved out of knowledge, by the way. He’s got me to 
advise him,” said the Grower, “and when Gregson Grundall 
befriends a man, he befriends him. Mind you that!” 

He had come, hoping to steal a march on the man he 
boasted of befriending, and had gained nothing by his 
coming. Hence Grundall’s bitterness. And at any minute 

B ra by- A sound of hoofs and carriage-wheels on the 

cart-track came to his hearing. The Brabycott brougham, 
all furbished up, and drawn by a pair of his horses, was 
pulling up at the garden-gate from which his groom was 
backing the chaise. 


5 

A short, dapper man in a white felt hat got out of the 
Brabycott brougham, and turned obsequiously to assist 
a heavier companion to descend. The Rector of Tolley- 
mead, no one less, portly, polished and beaming, speckless 


296 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

from the crown of his polished silk hat to the tips of his 
square-toed shoes. 

“Permit me, sir. My poor abode . . . Too honoured 
by your coming! . . 

It was Braby’s voice. . . . The room whirled round 
before the dizzy eyes of his wife. After so long, dear 
Lord!—dear Lord! His step on the brick-laid pathway! 
She might have swooned, but for a feeble cry that came 
from the cradle at her side. 

The baby’s cry recalled her strength. Bending over it, 
fondling and soothing, she was able to hide her agitation, 
compose her working face, and give to Braby—as to the 
Rector, crossing the cottage threshold—her little curtsy, 
that was like the dip of a tall flower before the wind. 

Whether or not his sharp black eyes were aware of her 
renewal of beauty, the Rector, honest, fussy gentleman, 
was visibly impressed. His wife’s account had led him to 
expect a coarse virago. He found a woman of peasant type, 
simple in speech and mien. “What eyes!” thought he, as 
a man may think who is not bound to celibacy. “What a 
wonderful sweep of red-gold curls. What a throat and 
bust and arms! And what a mellow voice she has! True, 
her hands are coarsened by her work, but their shape leaves 
nothing to be desired. And her feet, dear me! even in 
clumsy shoes,—why, a Duchess might envy them!” 

Thus thought the Rector as he bared his smooth and 
shining baldness, and with a few neat, pastoral words 
shook Mrs. Braby by the hand. The hand struck him 
as deadly chill. Its coldness had startled Braby, as he 
had formally touched it with his own an instant or so 
before. 

Now he offered his wife a chair, which she declined with 
a gentle inclination, and seated herself near the sleeping 
child, on a stool with a mended leg. He had broken the 
stool in a drunken fit, she remembered, as he placed on the 
dresser, beside the Rector’s beaver, his brand-new white 
felt hat. 

He was washed and shaved with scrupulous care, and 
his beard and moustache had given place to a pair of 
elongated whiskers, that framed between two wedges of 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 297 

shiny black his narrow sallow face. Malvina suspected 
him of dye, and indeed his jetty blackness gave rise to the 
suspicion that Art had been called in to conceal the ravages 
of Time. 

He wore a single-breasted black velvet coat, and a double- 
breasted shepherd’s-plaid waistcoat, whilst shepherd’s-plaid 
trousers of ample width hid his little patent boots. Even in 
his most degraded days he had been vain of his dehcate 
hands and feet, and nice as to the whiteness of his linen, 
as his wife, that patient slave and drudge, had had good 
cause to know. ... , 

A cascade of scarlet satin cravat, with a diamond horse¬ 
shoe in it, struck the note of discord in his dress that his 
mouth made in his face. A gold-framed eye-glass swung 
from his neck by the thin gold chain of the period. A 
thick gold guard of Albert type was looped across his vest. 
And the heavy watch-chain ended in a watch that had be¬ 
longed to his late father. An oval gold chronograph, with 
repeating chime, that he had coveted as a boy. 

The flaring cravat, in Malvina’s esteem, was anything 
but ‘seemly-appearing.’ The diamond horseshoe reminded 
her of glass trinkets sold at fairs. And the white felt hat 
to her sober mind was headgear for a professional pugilist, 
or a racing tipster, or a Cheap Jack. . . . She surveyed it 
with disdain. 

That Braby knew his wife disapproved of his gaudy 
taste was certain. His glance shunned hers, and his 
shoulders hunched, like those of a sulky boy. His vanity 
was wounded by her staid composed demeanour. Could he 
have known what a tumult raged in her, would he have been 
content? 

A glance of understanding had mutually passed between 
Braby and Gregson Grundall when the former had ushered 
the Rector across the threshold of the home. Malvina 
had seen the glance exchanged, and a sickness gathered 
at her heart as the pair shook hands effusively, and Grun¬ 
dall, removing his tall silk hat, made a floundering attempt 

“For me? . . . Pray no! My dear sir, no! cried the 
Rector, pained by this homage, as he literally seized the 


298 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Grower in his arms, and thrust him back into his seat. 
Into which he squelched like an oilskin bag full of some 
thick rich liquid, while he whispered respectful protesta¬ 
tions and blinked at the clergyman. “Positively, no! . .. . 
Not on any account. . . . Really, I could not permit it. 

. . . Newly convalescent, as I am informed, from illness of 
a serious kind. . . . We heard of an accident? Let me— 
arah!—hope no permanent disability will follow. You 
have/’ said the Rector solemnly, “been mercifully pre¬ 
served !” 

And Grundall creaked back like a rusty hinge, as the rev¬ 
erend gentleman beamed at him. 

“I have, Mr. Rector!—that’s what I have. And its 
left me an altered man. You’ve heard of me as a sinner, 
sir. A regular tough Customer. . . . Don’t deny it, sir! 
It was true. But—though late,—I’ve come to the Throne 
of Grace!” 

His great face glistened unctuously. He wagged it at 
the Rector, who, seated in the Windsor chair at the table- 
head, seemed occupying his rightful place. As Chairman, 
let us predicate, of a small religious meeting. And further 
Grundall would have addressed the Chair, but that Braby 
interposed: 

“Mr. Rector—My dear and valued friend, in the humility 
of his noble atonement, is too ready to bear—the onus— 
shall I say?” The Rector nodded assent. “Thank you, 
dear sir! The onus, then, of wrongs that have been inflicted 
on the unworthy subject who addresses you by—persons who 
are now dead.” 

“You refer to your father and sister, I fear. Let me 
ask you to forgive the injuries—and I do not doubt they 
are genuine—that you have endured at their hands. Be 
kind to their memories, Mr. Braby,” said the Rector with 
some emotion, “in view of a day when you and I shall need 
tolerance and forgiveness ourselves.” 

“Now that’s the advice,” gasped Grundall, “of a first- 
class Christian gentleman! When old Greg. Grundall sent 
for you from what might have been his dying bed, and said, 
as well as he could speak: This here lost Will of your 
father’s has turned up, and I don’t propose to fight you, 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 299 

but to put you in possession of the property at the earliest 
possible date. Subject to a amicable arrangement which 
I’ll lay down the lines of—’ he acted—that’s what Gregson 
did—in a similarly Christian way.” 

“Quite so, quite so,” agreed the Rector, joining his plump 
white finger-tips. “Meanwhile I am here at your request,— 
by permission of the mistress of this house.” He bowed 
across the table to Malvina, who bent her head in answer. 
“For what purpose,” continued the Rector, “I must own, I 
am not particularly clear. Time flies, and as a matter of 
fact I have a Vestry Meeting at seven. Will you—arah!— 
be good enough to explain what you want of me?” 

“It’s not easy,” returned Braby, wetting his dry lips, “to 
speak plainly when people are listening. . . . Those people, 
I mean, who are likely to misunderstand, or be wounded 
by what one may say. What I was when the hand of 
this generous friend”—he theatrically indicated the Grower 
—“lifted me out of the mud is well known. I needn’t refer 
to it here.” 

“Put it short and sweet,” wheezed Grundall, rolling his 
head luxuriously. “A drunken, loafing scallywag. That’s 
what you were, old chap! And now you’re Braby of Braby- 
cott, thanks to the Mercy of Providence. Providence and 
old Greg. Grundall, working together for righteousness. 

. Lord! what a change a man feels in his heart when 
he’s been to the Throne of Grace!” 

“A change indeed,” said the Rector, contemplating the 
Grower doubtfully, as the canting scoundrel rolled his head 
and smiled the smile of the just. “But with regard to the 

Will. May I ask-” The Rector addressed himself to 

Braby. “You are assured that the document is genuine? 

Then enlighten me. . . . Has it been proved ? . . .” 

“I’ll answer for Braby and answer for myself. It has 
Not !” returned Grundall emphatically. 

“Then why not?” 

“For the reason that Braby and me,” said the Grower, 
“have finished for good with the Law. Once bitten, twice 
shy. These here Equity sharks have gulped down two- 
thirds of the property. What’s left I hand over to Braby, 
and keep-” 



300 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“The Will ?” asked the Rector with point. 

“Not the Will. He’s got that, or old Rumbold, his pal, 
is keeping it snug in some corner. What old Greg, has 
got out of it, reverend Sir, is the cleansing of his heart and 
his soul! A Reservation in Heaven in exchange for worldly 
possessions. What are possessions after all!” cried the 
Grower in his stertorous whisper, “compared with the riches 
as a man may draw for nothing from the Throne of Grace! 
Wherefore the arrangement betwixt Braby and myself, is 
that he shall take over the Property, which was sold by 
order of the Court of Chancery three years ago, to me; I 
guarantee him a income of Eighteen Hundred and up¬ 
wards,—and I place a lump sum to his account at the Hert¬ 
fordshire and Middlesex Bank.” 

“While the Will remains unproven, I think?” the Rector 
remarked suavely. 

“Unproven, Mr. Rector!” said the Grower, rather taken 
aback. “And Gregson Grundall, the Defendant in the Case, 
—who won it, you’ll maybe remember? Grundall is still 
in the eye of the Law the owner of the property.” 

“And Mr. Braby is satisfied,” asked the Rector, “that 
you treat him fairly?” 

Braby bent his head to the clergyman over his flaming 
satin cravat. 

“Satisfied, Mr. Rector, for the reasons previously ex¬ 
plained to you. Between the devil and the deep sea”—there 
was sardonic humour in his smile. 

“Chancery is the deep sea, I presume?” hazarded the 
Rector. 

“And Gregson Grundall is the Devil, I suppose,” creaked 
that worthy, wallowing in his chair. 

“I feel sure—” began the Rector, “nothing offensive was 
intended-” 

“Let him insult me,” said Grundall, “if he likes. I bear 
no malice, bless you! I’ve forgiven him worse than that 
since I bowed as a sinner at the Throne of Grace. Wasn’t 
it him, a young booby of eighteen, who caught me making 
love to Ann Braby, and went and blabbed to his father, and 
got me in trouble with my own ? . . . I was a regular young 



How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 301 

blackguard then. Now I’m able to own it. Oh what a 
blessed thing it is to have come to the Throne of Grace!” 

So this sordid quarrel was the root of the feud between 
Braby and his family. . . . The Rector glanced at Braby as 
Grundall panted on. 

“I’ve said I was a thorough young blackguard then. 
There’s the truth for you, Mr. Rector. A tippling Junior 
Partner of the Firm, just out of his Articles to his dad. 
A swearing, gambling, whoring chap—(that’s what the old 
man called me)—who aimed at an heiress, and planned to 
mix his own with the Braby blood. The Braby blood! 
And what was it but the blood of a Liverpool merchant,” 
gasped Grundall, blinking through the sweat that streamed 
over his large round face. “A tough old trader in nigger- 
flesh like his father was before him—with more murders on 
his wicked old soul than-” 

“Really, Mr. Grundall, I must beg-” 

“Your pardon, reverend gentleman,” said Grundall, 
apparently stricken. “For a sinner cleansed at the Throne 
of Grace, what I said was wrong, I’ll own!” He fumbled 
for the large white handkerchief and snuffled in it softly, 
dabbed at his eyes, gulped several times, and extended his 
dexter hand. “Will Braby, there has been ill will between 
us two, my Brother. Catch hold of that and shake it, lad, 
for I forgive you all! The hand of a pardoned sinner,” 
said Grundall, gently blubbering, “I offer, in fraternal love, 
to you, my enemy!” 

Braby got up to grasp the hand, and Malvina, as a 
woman dreaming, beheld him snuffling and mopping his 
eyes like the hoary humbug in the chair. Even the Rector, 
sensibly touched by this display of generous emotion, pro¬ 
duced his own immaculate square of cambric, and blew his 
nose. 

“Oh, what a mercy it is,” said the Grower, exultantly 
wheezing and smiling, “when a man s got Religion to such 
an extent as his enemy’s his brother and friend! Me and 
Anna Maria were sweethearts, my Friend.” He leered 
upon Braby horribly. “You put the kibosh on our court¬ 
ing, you did, and lost me my Partnership in the Firm.” 


302 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“These harrowing memories, my excellent sir,” the 
Rector tactfully hinted, “should hardly be—recalled, shall 
I say?—at the present place and time.” 

“My Dad was a sharp old codger,” said the Grower, 
still addressing himself to Braby, “and yours was his 
wealthy client. So Greg, went overboard. Not as you 
did yourself much good, my Friend, by your spying and 
your tattling. You got kicked out of Brabycott when 
your sister was chief again. But you’d parted her and 
me, my Friend,—so I married the present Mrs. Grundall, 
—who had Land, and money to develop the Land—and 
went into the Growing line. Through you, my Brother, 
I was bound to a wife and a Business I didn’t fancy! And 
the pleasantest dreams I had o’ nights, my Friend, were 
of murdering You! Smashing your skull to bloody pulp. 
Yet to-day I can take you to my Boosom. Glory! Halle¬ 
lujah! World without end, Amen!” 

If the speaker had gnashed upon Braby with his teeth 
and stammered imprecations and curses, devoting the soul 
of his enemy to the uttermost depths of the Pit, these would 
have conveyed to Malvina’s mind a less deadly impression 
of hatred—lasting, unmerciful, pitiless—than these utter¬ 
ances of pardon and love. And yet, though she shuddered 
with loathing of the man, so did not those others who lis¬ 
tened. Braby snuffled. The Rector shed tears. They 
shook hands and the Grower went on: 

“Ann Braby had ought to have got married, she ought! 
and the old man pretended to think so. But nobody was 
fit for his girl in his view, the obstinate, stiff-necked old 
chap! Started bullying her presently—that’s what he did! 
And before you’d turn round, both were at it. Braby had 
got wind of —I never knew what!” said Grundall with 
elaborate innocence. “But I’ve an idea it had some¬ 
thing to do with his daughter’s being thick with some 
man.” 

t With his glaring eyes, and the ugly hooked beak rapa¬ 
ciously jutting between them, he looked like a big bloated 
spider as he wrought at his cobweb of words. And that 
sense of calamity, following soon, weighed heavier on the 
soul of Malvina. The four walls of the room seemed to 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 303 

crush her, and she longed to snatch the child up and fly. 

“That was what drove Braby to send Ann away. He 
packs her to Brighton,” said Grundall, “and sends off a 
groom to fetch over my dad, and he makes a new Will 
making Wilfrid his heir, and the Faggis’s witness him 
sign. . . . And he sticks it away where he knows as it’s 
safe, and sit down in his chair for a snoozle. And never 
wakes up—and no Will can be found—but the one that 
leaves everything to Ann!” 

“Sad, for our friend here,” said the Rector, checking 
a yawn with plumply-cushioned finger-tips. “But for his 
sister one must say—Providential at the least!” 

“She wasn’t in that state of soul as she’d have acknowl¬ 
edged Providence,” said the Grower, shaking his bullet 
head. “She’d have said she’d got her rights. She’s dead 
and gone, Ann Braby is—but Pm bound to admit she was 
a sinner. And I’ve my doubts whether when she died, 
she’d found the Throne of Grace. She was in trouble and 
she took it hard; and when she sent for me by Petcher, 
the Funeral being over and the Will being proved—I did 
my best for her.” 

“Hah!” said the Rector, drumming his finger-tips softly 
on the table to a measure that suggested the congrega¬ 
tion leaving Church. 

“There was going to be a child,” said the Grower, blink¬ 
ing and gasping and twitching. “She’d never own who 
was the father—she kept that a secret, you see.” 

“Hm!” said the Rector dubiously, breaking off in the 
middle of his voluntary. The Grower went on: 

“When she went away to an unknown place with Petcher, 
it was under Petcher’s sister’s name that she passed while 
she was there. And before she came back to Brabycott, 
she sent the child to me at Wheatstone-” 

“H’rrumph!” ejaculated the Rector, loudly clearing his 
throat. 

“In a Christmas Hamper marked ‘Perishable. To Be 
Opened At Once,’ ” said the Grower. 

“Dear me, dear me, I find,” said the Rector, “these de¬ 
tails distressing in the extreme.” 

“Not more than I did, reverend sir,” returned Grundall, 



304 The Pipers of the Market Place 

rolling his head at him. a Put yourself in my place, dear 
sir, when I cut the hamper-string!” 

“I beg to decline. Positively to decline!” returned the 
Rector warmly. 

“I hadn’t got religion in them days and I took it like 
a heathen,” wheezed the Grower. "If I’d been the man 
I am to-day I’d have took it to the Throne of Grace. But 
I’d given my word to Ann, poor thing! to help her in her 
trouble,—and despite the tongue of slander, sir, I was a 
father to that child!” 

"You—arah!—have been credited,” said the Rector, 
"with a paternal regard for the young lady.” 

"Het’s a fine gal,” gasped the Grower, "and she loves 
her Uncle Greg. And when her unfortunate mother died 
she sent me a message by Petcher. Not a letter, because 
she got her death by Smallpox—which is a catching com¬ 
plaint. And Ann was blind by having got it bad, and 
could only send a verbal message. And she thanked me 
from her heart of hearts, she said, for my chivalrous and 
noble conduct, and she’d left to my sole disposition all 
the property she’d got in the world. On the private un¬ 
derstanding,” puffed the Grower, who was getting badly 
winded, "that I left it back to Hetty. Without Conditions 
—in my Will.” 

"You—astonish me!” ejaculated the Rector. 

"Now comes the kernel of the business.” This Will 
having been found by Braby, I’ve put on my considering- 
cap and hit upon a plan. I hand over to Braby, Braby- 
cott, an income and a certain sum of money, without pro¬ 
test, on condition that he adopts Hetty as his niece.” 

The Rector stared, and turned his stare disquietingly on 
Braby, whose shifty gaze avoided his. 

"And he accepts these terms?” 

Grundall answered: 

"He accepts, the girl being his natural niece, and she’ll 
share with his son in the property. Het don’t get on too 
well at home,” added the Grower with his blinking grin. 
"A fine upstanding young woman she is, and the very spit 
of Maria. Braby you’d say, to the very backbone—who¬ 
ever her father may have been! It’s understood she’ll be 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 305 

treated with respect/' he added in his whisper. “Petcher’ll 
act as Housekeeper—but Hetty’ll be mistress of the House." 

A leg of the stool scraped on the floor—the leg that 
had been broken. Malvina had stirred for the first time 
since she had taken her place! 

“Het and the Boy might Marry by and by, when the 
boy's had a bit of schooling. Manners and Learning and 
Tailoring have made a swell of a clod before now. And 
then the Property won’t be halved," said the Grower with 
a rattle in his breathing. “And my girl will have the 
Braby name, since she ain't got one of her own." 

“But whattan if Braby's lad 'ud clem rather than touch 
th' money, an' dwell as a bacheldore for life, before he'd 
marry th’ maid? . . . Her yo’ calls Hetty—as swears like 
a groom, fur my own ears ha' heerd her!—'ull niver set 
at th' board wi’ me nor rule the roost i' my home. So 
nobbut your doors 'ud stand open that long as th’ ivy- 
bush covers th' lintel, an’ the stars shine into th’ cellars, 
you’ll wait," said Malvina to Braby, “fur yo’r wife! As 
fur the boy, he’ll frame to choose betwixt his father an' 
his mother. For I’ll shift to addle my livin’ i' this place 
—whether he goes or stays!" 

Braby leaped in his chair as his wife’s mellow tones 
wakened echoes under the rafters. He pounded the table 
with his doubled fist, and screamed in his high-pitched 
voice: 

“Mr. Rector, I appeal to you! As a party to this dis¬ 
cussion-" 

“No, Mr. Braby! Far from it. An independent wit¬ 
ness, if you please. To drag the—arah!—Established 
Church into the midst of a discussion of this nature—by 
the heels," said the Rector, “as you have done—is not— 
arah!—fitting, sir!" 

“I’ll be heard," spluttered Braby, plucking at his neck 
as though the red cravat were burning. “I am righted and 
reinstated, sir, but what is the good of this? If those who 
ought to help me up, drag me down, what can I hope 
for? Must I be branded to the end of my days as a 
drunkard in this place?" 

“No, no, Mr. Braby! The most rancorous tongues must 



306 The Pipers of the Market Place 

be silent,” protested the Rector, “in the face of a genuine 
change of life and a determined will to persevere. Chris¬ 
tian charity still exists, as your friend, by deeds, has proved 
to you.” He added as Grundall waved a hand in humble 
abnegation of his praises, “Be cheerful, Braby, I counsel 
you. And you, my dear Mrs. Braby! Exhort your good 
husband, as a true wife should, to look to the Future with 
hope!” 


6 


An opening, afforded by the clergyman’s words, for 
something planned out previously, brought Braby’s sullen 
head erect and a gleam into his black eyes. Another rapid, 
glimmering glance passed between him and Grundall, and 
once more Malvina sensed herself the object of concerted 
attack. 

“Putting the question with respect to your cloth,” re¬ 
turned Braby, controlling his fury, “how is my wife to 
exhort me to hope when her acts egg me on to despair? 
In this very first hour when my prospects are changed she 
deserts me. . . . She cuts herself off from me. . . . She’ll 
not eat of my platter nor live under my roof, now my 
grandfather’s money is mine. You are witness to-day of 
my final attempt to bring her to listen to reason-” ’ 

“Reason,” said the Rector with displeasure in his face, 
“is not Recrimination. I observe that Mrs. Braby makes 
no reference to faults patent on your own side. Weak¬ 
nesses—vices, of a kind both flagrant and distressing. No 
one could live in Tolleymead, sir, and remain in ignorance 
of these.” 

“Oh, if you take sides-!” began Braby with a shrug. 

“I came here at your solicitation,” returned the Rector, 
“to assist at a domestic consultation with counsel and ad¬ 
vice. Let me remind you once again that my time is 
strictly limited, and beg you to confine yourself exclusively 
to the matter in hand.” 

“I’ll be as clear and brief as I can,” said Braby with 
twitching eyebrows. He gnawed his lips for a moment 
and went on, sometimes halting to wet them with his 



How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 307 

tongue, “Mrs. Braby has—has listened to a statement of 
the terms of my settlement with Mr. Grundall. On those 
terms, I expect her to remove from this place and take 
up her abode under my roof. To her—and my son, I 
throw open my doors—the doors of a husband and father. 
To her and my son I would offer my hand.” 

“And your heart?” 

Braby added: 

“And my heart!” 

His heart! He could speak of his heart. Eh, the men! 
thought Malvina as she sat by the cradle. Her eyes were 
cast downwards, her face was composed, but a tempest 
was raging in her soul. 

“I presume we are waiting for Mrs. Braby to decide?” 
said the Rector, and glanced at the others. 

She leaned to the cradle and rose to her height with 
the baby in her powerful arms. 

“I be poorly reared an' but little taught, nobbut I ha’ 
learned me one thing. An Oath as be swore on th’ Bible 
munna be broke wi’out sin. An' when this man Braby 
asked o’ me to marry him seventeen years ago, he swore 
wi’ his hand on the Holy Book as the money he’d crave 
no more. The money as were the price o’ blood and got 
by a deed o’ Murder that set my heart like stone i’ my 
breast when he told me how ’twere done. I were a maw- 
ther then. Now I be Thirty-five, an’ little have I seen 
save sorrow, but no penny o’ th’ Braby money ha’ iver 
soiled my hands. Nor iver shall!” said the mellow voice. 

“And am I to swelter in poverty,” shrieked Braby with 
a passionate gesture, “to the end of my life, ^because of 
a silly oath I took when I was a lovesick fool?” 

“An oath be an oath,” she answered him. “I swore one 
when us were wedded.” 

“G—d d—n it, ’Vina! are you mad?” screamed the 
raucous voice she knew. As he leaped to his feet, to strike 
perhaps, in the frenzy of his anger, the Rector caught 
his wrist and cried: 

“Mr. Braby, recall yourself!” 

“Recall myself! Can I help it, sir?” He clenched his 
hand and stammered. “Can I keep from losing patience 


308 The Pipers of the Market Place 

with a woman as stubborn as this? Let her live apart if 
she is set on it! Perhaps she has her reasons!” 

“There are folks about here would say as much,” wheezed 
the Grower, cutting in. "We know, Mrs. Braby! And you 
know!—and so does Mackilliveray, the ganger! Uncom¬ 
monly wide-awake, that’s what he is! You may take it 
we’re knowing all round!” 

“There be that betwixt Mackilliveray and me,” she an¬ 
swered with her eyes on Braby, “as should part our wedded 
lives for good, but the sin o’t binna mine!” 

“Yet you were here with Mackilliveray alone,” said 
Grundall in his hateful whisper, “the very day they found 
the Will. Your husband told me himself. He heard what 
passed—you Paragon of chastity and virtue!—when Mac¬ 
killiveray bid you leave your home and set up house with 
him.” 

She looked at Braby, and read him clear as he winced 
and quailed before her. So this was the plan. The tables 
to be turned, the stigma hers, henceforth. . . . 

“Do yo’, my husband, speak to this?” She asked the 
question simply. 

“How can I help it, ’Vina,” he whined, “when it’s the 
naked truth?” 

Even as he uttered the slanderous lie, he trusted her 
not to denounce him. Even the cowardly whine in his 
voice made entreaty to her, the betrayed. 

As she suddenly lifted a powerful arm he leaped back 
out of reach of her vengeance. But her hand was upraised 
in appeal, not in wrath. She said, with her eyes on his 
face: 

“May the Lord strike me dead wi’ your child in my 
arms, on this hearth yo’ ha’ darkened an’ blighted, if iver 
I framed to be faithless to yo’, in deed, or in thought or 
in word!” 

She lowered the hand she had lifted but now in that 
solemn appeal to her Maker, and rocked the now waken¬ 
ing child on her breast, as it uttered its petulant cry. As 
though fascinated, Braby stared at the child, whose bright 
black eyes, so like his own, were opened on him widely, 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 309 

whilst its gaping, toothless mouth again gave forth the 
peevish wail. 

“A girl?” he asked as the summoned groom appeared 
on the cottage threshold, and the Grower was hoisted out 
of his chair and helped down the brick-laid path. 

“A girl, an’ the spit of yo’rself, poor lamb!” said Mal¬ 
vina, as the doll-like fists were brandished in impotent 
menace. She added as Braby’s wavering glance dropped 
under the weight of her own: “So like yo’ as I ha’ my 
doubts ’twill be worse for her hereafter! but Lord forbid 
as I should love the litlin’ less for that!” 

His sallow face was stung to red. He looked cautiously 
about him. They were alone, the Rector having lent the 
Grower his arm down the garden-path. Loud in confabu¬ 
lation, their voices came to Braby. . . . He took the white 
hat from the dresser-ledge and blew a speck of dust from 
it, and now there was mockery in his eyes, and a jeering 
smile on his mouth. 

“You remember what I said to you some time back 
about Burning the Ship, eh, ’Vina?” He added, seeing 
assent in her look: “This is the match to the tow!” 

“So that be the way o’ it, be it?” she gave back, con¬ 
fronting him with bateless spirit, as “Braby!” sounded from 
the garden in the Grower’s whispering roar. 

“The way of it. . . . The Braby way! . . he an¬ 
swered. 

Said Malvina: 

“Yo’r master’s callin’ yo’, my man. Take yo’r foot in 
yo’r hand an’ go!” 


7 

His retreating steps ground the brick-laid path he had 
made for dead Susan Parmint. The gate-latch clicked. 
The coachman drew up to the fence with the Brabycott 
brougham. The Rector stepped into the brougham alone, 
with handshakings for Grundall and Braby, with a vague, 
polite flourish of his shiny silk hat, intended for Malvina, 
she knew. 


310 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Braby!” he called to the woman 
at the window. 

For the Rector, well-meaning gentleman, it had been 
anything but a good afternoon. As he bowled in the di¬ 
rection of the Rectory in the camphorous blue gloom of 
the brougham, some spasms of mental disgust were his at 
the part he had been made to play. 

He recalled what had passed during his interview at 
‘The Braby Arms’ with the husband. Braby had spoken 
ambiguously of a young man, cast out from home through 
a family misunderstanding, cut off from the ties of rela¬ 
tionship and divorced from Christian influences; exposed 
to the temptations of village life before the age of twenty 
years. 

The young man had taken a vulgar mate. An ignorant, 
untaught young woman, who had travelled with Irish 
tinkers about the countryside. . . . How should such a 
sordid union, the glamour of passion banished, be other 
than utterly wretched? Braby had asked with heat. At 
worse and graver faults in his wife than those he had ad¬ 
mitted, he hinted, while affecting to cover these with a 
veil of reticence. And the picture of his own misery, driv¬ 
ing him to despair and degradation, he drew for the bene¬ 
fit of his hearer, and coloured with a master-hand. 

And yet . . . Appearances deceive, reflected the Rec¬ 
tor sagely. But the woman looked so noble and had borne 
herself so well. . . . Again and again that afternoon he 
had been constrained to reluctant admiration. Forced to 
comparisons,—to say the least,—irreverent if not pro¬ 
fane. . . . 

Jael and Judith and Deborah, the Prophetess of ancient 
Israel. . . . The chaste Susanna; Naomi, and the Mother 
of the Maccabees. The Peasant Maid of Domremy, and 

Another,—purer—nobler- Yes; when Malvina had 

lifted up her child before the faces of her judges, he, the 
Rector of Tolleymead, had thought of the Mother of 
Christ. . . . 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 311 


8 

So this was the thing she had felt in the air, the intangible 
evil that menaced! Spotless as snow, chaste as the sea, 
unshaken in faith to the faithless, her honour had suffered 
calumnious assault. She was branded adulteress—by him! 

The mate she had pardoned, the man she had loved! 
Long after her accusers had left her she sat speechless 
and still by the cradle, overwhelmed by the shock of his 
attack. His was no baseless accusation brought against 
his wife in a passing fit of anger. Nay, but a clearly- 
thought-out plan for throwing her to the wolves. 

Would you shun the stigma of some loathsome vice? 
Some infamous act committed? Then boldly accuse an¬ 
other of the thing that you have done! Point out in in¬ 
nocent, cleanly flesh the canker you are hiding, leper! Call 
judgments down from Heaven on heads less guilty than 
your own. 

Clear as clear day Malvina’s mind arrayed the facts in 
order. She saw herself the scapegoat of her wedded prod- 
igal. 

Thrown to the wolves! And in the act his eyes had 
asked for mercy. He had trusted to her not to accuse, 
even while he quailed before her look. He had trembled 
even as he posed in his cheap theatricality, as a husband 
whose anger at being left had bidden him burn the ship. 

“Eh, ’tis full well to burn the ship when the cargo- 
money’s in your pocket!” thought Malvina, stung to the 
caustic jest by her bitter scorn of him,—Gregson Grundall’s 
puppet and tool!—yet to smart for the bargain, struck with 
the father of Maria Braby’s child. 

For Malvina had known, for many years, the story of 
the Christmas hamper, and the method by which Maria 
had got rid of the clog upon her life. The tale had always 
brought a frown upon her brow, and nipped her lips to¬ 
gether. When women bring bastards into the world, 
thought she, they should face the world, by rights! 

Tales of the girl’s fierce temper and wild, ungovernable 
nature had circulated freely during these recent years. 


312 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Hetty appeared to unite in herself the rough coarseness of 
her reputed father, with her unwedded mother’s warped 
and curious perversity. 

Eh! what a woman! to have lost her decent name for 
Grundall, the big, red, roaring, savage man of violence 
and unscrupulous greed. Eh! what a rogue to have so 
made good his hold upon Maria’s money, and framed the 
plan that won his girl recognition as Braby’s niece. 

And Eh! what a queer, queer place this world! Where 
women are pilloried for virtue, and Fidelity and Love and 
Sacrifice are as dirt under the feet of the crowd! Thus 
mourned Malvina, sitting on her stool beside her baby’s 
cradle, while the November sun went down and darkness 
covered the land. . . . 

Perhaps if Braby had come crawling back, burned the 
Will, and sued for pardon, she might have forgiven the 
Unforgettable, and taken him to her great wounded heart. 
But he did not come; he was never again in life to cross 
that threshold; and the voice that cried: “I forgive you!” 
was to cry in the ears of the Dead. 

The baby, wakening hungry, cried. She took it and 
tried to feed it. No milk would come, to her dismay. 
Her breasts were very stones. She made shift to boil a 
little pap, and stilled its fretful wailing. When satisfied 
at last, it slept in her arms, she sat nursing it and think¬ 
ing. ... Eh! what queer thoughts will come to a woman 
in such a plight as hers! 

At seven o’clock Stephen would come home. Whatever 
should she tell him ? That he had a bad woman for mother 
to him? . . . She knew he would say it was a lie. Herb 
Honesty grew in Stephen’s as in her own soul-garden. . . . 
He had from her the single heart. He was loyal. He 
would know it was a lie! 

The blackbird chacked angrily in the orchard-close. Per¬ 
haps some prowling cat had scared him ? The foxes barked 
in the coppice, and Stephen did not come. 

The hunting owls were crying, as they moused along the 
eaves of the cornricks, “ ’Oo—’oo—’oo hoo!” and some¬ 
thing gnawed in the corner where the bread-crock stood. 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 313 

There were eerie flutterings in the chimney, and the candle 
burning on the table where Stephen’s supper waited threw 
a shadow on the wall behind her that was monstrous, black, 
and grim. 

Her own, or a Shadow from the Otherwhere, formless, 
and full of menace! Would she ever again taste peace 
under this roof? Never again, she knew! 

Never before in all the years had the cottage seemed so 
lonely, or so full of curious noises that turned a body queer. 
There were scrabblings underneath the floor and rustlings 
in the ceilings; odd tickings came from the cupboards and 
cracks from the furniture. ... In the turmoil of her heart 
and mind she longed for consolation. The babe was sleep¬ 
ing soundly now. She laid it in its cradle and reached the 
Book from the mantelshelf. 

She placed it reverently on the table and opened the 
sacred pages, seeking some heavenly manna to stay her 
suffering, hungering soul. . . . 

But her brain was too dazed with the shock she had 
undergone, and her eyes were too dim for reading. Not 
that they had shed a tear as yet. Like her breasts, they 
seemed changed to stone. 

A thought came to her. She drew a pin from her dress 
and thrust it between the pages. Then she opened the 
Book, with her finger on the pin, at the Gospel of St. 
John. The pin indicated the final line of the twenty-fourth 
Chapter. Malvina drew a shuddering breath as she read: 

“Arise, let us go hence.” 

* * * * * 

9 

The postman had called on the previous day with a 
letter for Stephen from Faggis, maddening in its am¬ 
biguity, and prodigal in blots. It ran like this: 

“If a Shaver as I knos is Wishful For to Ear Sumthin 
to Is Edwanteg E wil Bio the Bob and the Downer InkloSed 
in A Riturn Fair From Sowgit to Kings X & Meat the 


314 The Pipers of the Market Place 

UndeRsined punktool at covn GardEN MarKiT. 9 Am. 
Sharp satty Buckley S end arKaid. 

“yurs FatFuly 

“b. Faggis 

“P. s. the Mrs senDs Luv All rounD the Bigest LumP 
to the BaibY. 

“p.SS. she Sais Keep yur Ed in the Karrig & Not Git 
sticken It owt the WinDer as yule Want wun if Yu As 
the Luck to git J. Buckleys Job.” 

Eighteen penny postage-stamps were enclosed. Stephen 
rose with the cocks next morning, scrubbed himself until 
he shone and put on his Sunday clothes. He wetted his 
mop of yellow hair in the effort to cure it of curling, lav¬ 
ished blacking on his Sunday boots, and looked in Mal¬ 
vina’s glass. 

He was several inches taller now, and nearly two years 
older. Not long to wait! he had told himself as his gar¬ 
ments had straitened to his wear. As his jacket-sleeves 
had receded from his wrists, and his trouser-legs soared 
above his ankles, the piping voices, dumb so long, had 
sounded in his ears again. 

And now. . . . Who knew what the day might bring? 
He glowed with anticipation as he made his way to Sow- 
gate, the station of the long white gates. 

The level-crossing reminded him of that night in the 
previous October. He remembered its anguish and terror 
now as one may remember a dream. 

But a small cold shudder rippled down between Stephen’s 
strong, square shoulders as the King’s Cross train came 
booming in, and the porter found him a place. 

If he had not lifted up his head, he thought, and rolled 
over amongst the cabbages, snatched from the hurtling, 
roaring Death by the fierce revolt of Life—he would have 
missed this railway-trip; his first as a passenger with a 
ticket, and the mysterious, joyful thing that waited at the 
end! 

So the iron wheels beat out a song for Stephen on the 
humming metals as Colney Hatch, Alexandra Park, and 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 315 

Crouch End were left behind: ‘Here’s-a-Market-job-A- 
Market-job-Coming-for-Ste-phen Braby. The-boy-who- 
put-his-head-on-the-rails-in-f ront-of-the-Down Express! 
Isn’t-it-better-to-be-Alive-you sil-ly-Ste-phen-Braby. And 
com-ing-in-for-a-Market-Job?—Oh yes!—Oh yes! Oh- 
yes !’ 

Despite the shining novelty of the thing, the half-hour’s 
journey seemed a long one to the boy who perched on the 
edge of the seat, and thought every stop meant King’s 
Cross. . . . The terminus, crowded even then, had a curi¬ 
ous shock in store for him. For, standing under a gas- 
lamp on the noisy, clanging platform, he saw, or fancied 
that he saw, the man Mackilliveray. 

A moment, and the burly, red-headed man in the coarse, 
rough garments of his calling was lost to sight and Stephen 
made his way to the outer air. And for the sum of two¬ 
pence cash secured a lift to Covent Garden as a passen¬ 
ger in the vast interior of an otherwise empty van. 

That the big black letters on the varnished tilt spelt 
‘BUCKLEY BROS., COVENT GARDEN,’ seemed joy¬ 
ful presage of some good the Fates held up in store. ‘Be¬ 
fore this day be over I may have the right to sit here/ 
thought Stephen, as they clattered down Gray’s Inn Road, 
and by Drury Lane, to the Strand. 

The racket and jam of Wellington Street and the sights 
and smells of the neighbourhood went as instantly to Ste¬ 
phen’s head as if he had taken wine. It was close on 
nine, and the roaring streams of barrows and vans and 
Market trucks piled up with Market produce were rolling 
away North, West and South, more slowly than they had 
come. 

All the world seemed cracking walnuts, and spitting out 
the shells of them. Their fat green hulls were being 
stripped by women with brown-dyed hands. Chrysanthe¬ 
mums of gorgeous hues went nodding by in hampers, great 
pyramids of wine-dark grapes rode on men’s heads in bas¬ 
kets, and masses of purple violets were heaped on the hag¬ 
glers’ trays. 

“Vi’lets a penny! . . .” The November sun drew from 
their purple petals a fragrance that prevailed above all 


316 The Pipers of the Market Place 

other scents and smells. Even when the oil frying in a 
pan at a fish-shop caught the fire, the reek was sweetly 
tempered with the scent of violets. . . . 

The van turned into Tavistock Street, passing a barrier 
of hoardings, over which showed new-built brick walls and 
ladders and scaffold-poles. They were building the New 
Flower Market here, the van-man’s mate told Stephen, 
though it wouldn’t be ready for a couple o’ year, if it ever 
Was wanted at all. 

“The old Flower Market was good enough for Buck- 
leys and other Growers,” said the van-man’s mate as he 
lent a hand to help Stephen in getting down. And some¬ 
body said behind him: “My Crikey, if this ain’t the 
Shaver!” and Stephen was joyfully shaking hands with 
Mrs. Faggis and Ben. 

B. Faggis, even redder and huskier than of old, wore 
a new peaked cap of moleskin and a new top-coat of broad¬ 
cloth, with a velvet collar and cuffs. Knee-tight trousers 
of drab cable cord, gradually expanding downwards, cast 
his shining boots into eclipse, and the varied hues of his 
silk handkerchief suggested a tulip-bed. As for his Missus, 
in a purple merino gown, a shawl of blazing tartan and a 
bright green bonnet trimmed with dahlias, her splendour 
took away one’s breath. 

“Deafenin’, ain’t it?” Faggis grinned. “Wot I calls slap- 
up an’ no error. She’s a fine woman in full fig, though I 
say it as didn’t ought.” 

“And who ought to say it if you oughtn’t?” demanded 
his wife, with spirit. 

“If you’re peckish, Shaver, save your edge,” advised the 
hawker, evading the reply, “till we’ve got through the bit 
o’ bis’ness as we’ve come up ’ere to settle. And then, my 
cove, you shall ’ave a blow-out at the 'Before an’ After’ in 
Bow Street, as’ll put more strain on them buttons o’ yours 
than they ’ave to do with now.” 

“But don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” 
advised the motherly woman, “and remember, nothing’s 
settled, though there’s no ’arm in ’opes. This bein’ said, 
us three goes up, in a quiet way to Buckley’s, Mr. James 
havin’ dropped the hint to us he were in need of a Boy.” 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 317 

. Stephen’s heart beat so that he could not speak. Nor did 
his friends expect it. They took him between them and 
marched him round to the Buckley’s end of the Arcade. 
The nine-o’clock bell had sounded, and though the Market 
seemed thronged with people, most of the stalls were bare 
to the boards and the stallholders were counting receipts. 

IO 

“You look tired, Jem,” said the pursy voice of James 
Buckley’s stout old father, as he stood in the archway of 
the Arcade, smoking his invariable cigar. Beyond making 
him plumper and rosier and shorter of breath, the two 
years or so that had intervened since Stephen’s introduc¬ 
tion to the Market had dealt gently with the elder man, 
if not with his favourite son. 

“I’m well enough, Dad,” returned Mr. James, pencil¬ 
ling down a total, and transferring the takings of the day 
from his pockets to a wallet with a lock. “Why will you 
worry yourself?” 

“Why do you? should be the question. Can’t you stay 
down at Sidcup oftener than you do, and rely more on 
Groggard and the rest?” 

“I trust in Groggard and the rest of ’em as far as a 
master-man can, sir. Trust ’em too much—and the next 
thing.’ll be, my losing my principal’s cash.” 

“Meaning me by your ‘principal.’ Well, if you lost— 
though dash my buttons if I want to!—the cash’ll be John’s 
and yours when I go,—to play ducks and drakes with if 
you like.” 

“No need to talk of dying, Dad,” said his son, “for 
you’re as hearty and bowsy—as they say down in Berk¬ 
shire—as any man of your age, weight and size.” 

“I know you care for your old Dad, Jem,” said the 
father, rather huskily, clearing his throat and knocking off 
the ash of his cigar. 

“My old father,” returned the son, “who has been the 
best of men to me.” 

“But not as good as I mean to be by and by, Jemmy,” 
cried the elder Buckley, with a hurry and heat of utterance 


318 The Pipers of the Market Place 

that made him gasp and pant. “When The Venture (sail 
and steamship of the British-African Company) comes into 
dock at Liverpool, with a cargo for T. B.” 

“Now what does all this mean?” said Mr. James, sur¬ 
veying his parent apprehensively. “Don’t tell me you’ve 
ventured capital in another wild mare’s nest! Didn’t you 
promise John and me you’d stick to oranges and potatoes, 
with an occasional break-out, if you must and will, in, 
American apples and such?” 

“Well, so I have. But you can’t deny,—there’s a want 
of imagination in potatoes,” argued the father. “Ain’t 
there, Jemmy? Own it, now!” 

“They pay!” his son returned. 

“I don’t deny they do pay uncommon,” admitted the old 
gentleman. “And the Orange—though my rheumatics tune 
up at a single suck of one of ’em—the Orange, Spanish and 
Italian, has been a friend to me since I was a boy! But the 
Orange’s nose—you’ll understand I’m speaking metaphoric¬ 
ally, Jemmy!—will be put out of jint before very long by 
another kind of Fruit. ... A Golden Fruit of Paradise, 
never before pop’larized in England,”—the old gentleman 
chuckled and rubbed his hands at the sight of his son’s long 
face—“packed by Dame Natur’ in tough cases that keep 
out dirt and grittiness. Fruit that keeps the black man 
sleek, and the Spaniard idle and lazy, and fattens their pigs 
for both of ’em for nothing, as you might say!” 

“And is this precious fruit of yours that the pigs and the 
blacks are so fond of—likely to go down with English¬ 
men ?” dryly inquired the son. 

“That’s where I’m safe on the doormat and my money as 
good as in my pocket,” declared the exultant old gentleman, 
slapping his son on the back. “For though it’s as common 
and as cheap as bullaces in Kentish orchards, it’s so remark¬ 
able nice in taste (being something in the way of rich 
sponge-cake beat up with pine-apple cream) that it’s as 
tempting to a Duke as to a Dustman, Jemmy. As for the 
Marchioness and the Milliner’s girl, they’ll take to ’em, I’ll 
lay! There’s a story, pop’lar amongst the Spaniards of 
them North-West Coast Islands, that the tree as bears ’em 
originally grew in the Garden of Paradise. And that when 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 319 

Eve made that little mistake as has cost us so much trouble, 
the fruit she picked was this identical fruit I’m a-putting 
on the Market now! Like another kind of Sarpint, to 
tempt the Marchionesses and Milliners, Ha, ha, ha! Phoo! 
Phew! Wait, let me get my breath!” 

“You’ll lose it too much to get it again, if you work your¬ 
self up in that manner,” said James Buckley, whose filial 
forebodings appeared likely to be justified, as the author of 
his being was rich imperial purple, from his muffler-edge to 
the inner rim of his low-crowned, shiny hat. 

“All right, Jem, all right, my boy!” chuckled the old gen¬ 
tleman, taking off his hat, and puffing and blowing as he 
mopped his steaming head. “But when I think of the 
precious Rise I am a-going to take out of the importers, it 
sends up the pressure to such a degree that I must blow off 
or bust. Now I’m better!” 

“I hope you are!” returned his son, looking at him anx¬ 
iously. “And when is the first consignment due of the fruit 
that the blacks don’t want?” 

“Not before Febrooary, Jem, when my banana-cellars 
will be ready. I’m getting some hot-water-pipes laid in to 
ripen the bunches off.” 

“Hot water pipes. ...” groaned James Buckley. “And 
what do you pay for shipping? A fancy price, I’ll venture 
to say, in freightage and import-dues!” 

“It is a trifle stiff, my boy,” admitted his father guiltily, 
not ceasing to smile, however, and briskly rubbing his 
hands. “But we’ll let sleeping dogs lie.” 

“ ‘Sleeping wolves’ you mean, I think,” grumbled James 
Buckley, “that when they wake will set on you and eat you 
out of house and home. For-” 

The speaker broke off, being taken here with so violent 
a fit of coughing that his tall thin frame was shaken like 
a bulrush in a gale. 

“Jemmy, Jemmy! I don’t like that . . . pleaded the 
old man anxiously. “It reminds me of your poor mother 
so much, that it keeps me awake at nights.” 

“It’s only a bit of a cold I get, working about the hot¬ 
houses. And talking of them reminds me,” said James, 
tugging anxiously at his brown beard, we shall want 



320 The Pipers of the Market Place 

another lad and a couple of young men on the nursery at 
Applethorpe.” 

“Well, if you want ’em, have ’em, Jem. Why should 
you trouble to ask ?” 

“Because your money pays ’em, sir. John thinks with 
me that to house ’em in that vacant cottage in the lot next 
Groggard’s would be best, with a woman to keep house, 
and clean. Faggis tells me he knows of one to suit, with a 
son fourteen or rising. A homely, decent body, he said, 
well known to himself and his wife. She could add to her 
wages, if she chose, by doing a bit on the Nurseries, and 
there’d be no more lodging at pubs, which is bad for the 
young men.” 

“Meanin’ skittles an’ swipes at all hours, and more bread- 
and-cheese than beef and mutton! I know, bless you, 
Jemmy my boy!” chuckled the cheery old man. 

“I thought about eighteen shillings a week for the 
woman, with houseroom in the cottage—and eight for the 
boy would suit you, Dad.” 

“They’ve a reference, I suppose?” 

“Ben Faggis is ready to back ’em. He was to bring the 
boy this morning, so if you’d like to see him yourself-” 

“No, no! I’ll see no boys! . . . Where’s my girl Lou 
a-hiding? Don’t tell me she’s not come with you, this Sat¬ 
urday holiday! . . . ’Tell you, Jem, I’ve had enough of 
all this going to school. She was sweet enough, and merry 
enough and graceful enough for her old grandad without 
Music, Dancing and Deportment and all the stuff they 
teach. And-” 

“Wait till you see the prizes she’ll bring us home at 
Christmas!” 

“I prize a kiss and a hug from my girl more than a row 
o’ gilt books! Why didn’t she come ?” 

“She has come. That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” 

“Well then, where is she?” grumbled the anxious grand¬ 
father. 

“Run over with a note to Father Fleet from her mother,” 
explained James Buckley. “He’s at the Church in Maiden 
Lane most days from seven till four. Or if he’s not, he 
lives close by. What’s the matter with you now, Dad ? . . . 




How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 321 

You wonder I dike to let the child run about these streets 
alone ?’ Well, for one thing, my Lou belongs as much as 
us, to the Market, and for another, she’s got a ’squire to 
see she comes to no harm.” 

“In the shape of young Ted Braybrooke, grandson of old 
Braybrooke of the ‘Portico.’ ... I see him fighting a coster 
in King Street yesterday.” . . . 

“Did the coster lick?” 

“Well, since you ask, he seemed to be getting his 
gruel.” 

“Then the chap who licked him will take care that noth¬ 
ing happens to Lou. Here’s Faggis with his wife and the 
boy.” 

“Top o’ the mornin’, gentlemen. Me and my Mis¬ 
sus-” 

“ ’Morning, ma’am,” said the elder Buckley, with a bow. 
“Pleased to meet you, and so’s my son.” 

“Mrs. Faggis and myself are friends of several years’ 
standing,” said Mr. James with a hearty shake of the good 
woman’s hand. “And I hope I may never see her look 

less young, handsome and blooming than-” 

“Than she do to-day!” cried the hawker. “Brayvo, Mr. 

J em! ” . „ .. 

“And thank you for the kindly words, I’m sure, said 

his beaming partner, “though I could wish to see yourself 

a bit more hearty, sir!” 

“I told you, Jem,” said Buckley, “everybody notices! 
“Oh, nonsense, Dad! . . .” returned the son, with some¬ 
thing like a frown. “So this is the boy. . . .” He pulled 
his beard. “I’ve seen you before, I rather think. Haven’t 
I?” he asked of Stephen, who, not content with touching 
his cap, had snatched it from his curly head. “Two years 
back, or rather less. ...” 

“Yessir!” gasped breathless Stephen. An what you 
says to me that day—I haven’t done it yet. But I’ve tried 

my best!” „ , A 

“Nor better than his best no man can do, remarked 

Faggis. 

“Nor neither Boy,” interposed his wife, “as I have heard 
on yet.” 




322 The Pipers of the Market Place 

*Tm bound to own forgetfulness of what I said on the 
occasion. Perhaps you can remind me, though, 1 ” suggested 
Mr. James. 

“You said, when you had asked my name, and I d 
answered ‘Stephen Braby,’ that when I’d growed taller by 
a foot you’d find me a Market job. ‘Might be in another 
three or four years. . . . When you’re sixteen/ you 
tells me.” 

“Well, are you?” 

“I were twelve then, an' ’twas two years ago.” 

“And you’re fourteen.” 

“Fourteen this month.” 

“And fourteen inches taller?” 

A huge sigh broke from Stephen’s breast: 

“Nobbut five an’ a quarter, sir.” 

“Can you give me a reason,” asked Mr. James, “why I 
should take you, Braby?” 

Stephen squeezed his cap in his big red hands, and drew 
a deep breath and said: 

“Th’ reason that I be a family-man, please, even though 
I mayn’t look it.” 

Faggis was heard to slap his leg. Old Buckley snorted 
with laughter and whisked out his red silk handkerchief to 
mask a pretended sneeze. James remained grave and smile¬ 
less, looking in the freckled countenance. Perhaps saying 
in his secret heart: “I wish I had a boy like this!” 

“And how many are you in family?” he asked. 

“There’s mother an’ me, an’ th’ baby. An’ mother don’t 
earn as much as she did, an’ I’m out of a job jus’ now.” 

“That will do for the present then,” said the tall thin man 
with kindness. “Now go and stroll round the Market, lad, 
while I talk with your good friends.” 

“Yessir!” said Stephen, radiant and red. 

“Come back in ten minutes,” said Buckley. “Or you 
had better make it a quarter of an hour.” 

“Yessir!” Stephen knuckled his hair and was gone like 
a shot from a catapult, to encounter a vision that took away 
his breath, and set his heart thumping in his breast. 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden * 323 


ii 

None other than Lou Buckley, but Lou so wonderfully 
altered. The fairy child who had given him the rose 
grown into a young Princess. With the child’s innocence 
in her radiant eyes, though the child’s soft curling ringlets 
were plaited in long thick tresses such as half-grown school¬ 
girls wore. 

She was not dressed in white as of old, but in soft blue 
cloth, fur-bordered. The fur was of a golden-brown, very 
nearly the colour of her hair. And on her curls was a 
velvet cap with a cluster of crimson berries, and a long 
bronze feather that might have dropped from an arch¬ 
angel’s wing. 

“Miss Lou!” 

Oh anguish!—she was passing by, just as though he had 
been a stranger, talking to her companion, a tall bare¬ 
headed boy. Older than Stephen, with bright dark eyes 
that turned to Lou admiringly, and a shining sweep of 
dark, smooth hair brushed over his broad white brow. 

“Miss Lou!” gasped Stephen helplessly. He wheeled but 
could not follow. The cry of his heart reached her, per¬ 
haps. Her bright young face looked round. . . . 

And then she was coming with her light quick steps back 
over the littered cobblestones, and Stephen was so mortal 
glad that he hadn’t a word to say. 

“I know you, don’t I?” The child’s sweet voice, but 
stronger, firmer, fuller. “You came here once, two years 
ago, when you weren’t so big and tall. And I gave you a 
rose from my birthday tree-” 

“Yes, Miss, an’ some one stole her. Got me off me guard 
an’ swiped her, like,” said Stephen, finding his tongue. 
“But if I’d had a chance to fight for her, they’d ha’ killed 
me before they got her!” 

“Then I’m glad you didn’t get a chance,” said Miss Lou 
in her womanly way. “And how is your mother, Stephen? 
—you see I haven’t forgotten. . . .” 

“She’s bobbish, thankee,” returned Stephen, “an’ the 
baby’s bobbish too.” 

He would have preferred to say ‘quite well,’ but the 



324 The Pipers of the Market Place 

words were slow in coming. Still, the bobbishness of his 
family drew a merry laugh from Lou. And a supercilious, 
jeering laugh from her good-looking companion, whose 
composure and assurance were remarkable indeed. 

Though he carried on his back the queerest clothes that 
Stephen had ever gaped at out of a booth at Marnet Fair, 
or a Circus Rider’s Show. 

This boy wore a dark blue woollen gown, buttoned to the 
neck with metal buttons, and girt about the hips below the 
waist with a worn red leather strap. Instead of being damp 
with conscious shame, and shrinking from observation, he 
held up his chin as though to display the clerical lappets 
at his throat. More than this, he carried a hand in a pocket 
of his blue knee-breeches, as though bright yellow stock¬ 
ings (ha ha!) were things to show, not hide. And he 
turned out his square-toed, low-cut shoes with preposterous 
assurance, as though he knew himself enviable and not a 
thing to scorn. 

“If I’d had th’ luck to ha’ met yon chap nigh Tolley- 
mead,” reflected Stephen, “I’d ha’ took an’ heaved a clod 
or two at they there petticoats o’ his’n!” And he permitted 
himself to indulge in the belittling reflection that while Big 
Tit wore a light blue coat and sported a canary-coloured 
waistcoat, the sensible bird stopped short at these, and 
ended in neat black stockings, unlike this youth, whom then 
and there he dubbed Young Yellow Legs. . . . 

Yellow Legs. The very name to accompany the clod, 
reflected Stephen; and a grin widened his mouth at the 
thought, a slow, deliberate grin. . . . Before it had time 
to fade away, and it took time in fading, the bright dark 
eyes of the oddly-dressed boy fixed it with a threatening 
stare. He said in his clear and pleasant voice, addressing 
the words to Stephen: 

“Look here, you chap. Is there anything you’d like to 
say to me ?” 

“Oh, no, Mr. Fred!” said Lou’s soft voice. “I shouldn’t 
think there was anything. Are you going home now, 
Stephen?” 

“Please no, Miss Lou, not yet. For Mr. James Buckley 
he wants a boy,” said Stephen, panting with excitement, 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 325 

“an’ I’m to know in a quarter of an hour whether Fm like 
to suit.” 

“I hope you will, Stephen Braby. Good-bye.” She 
nodded gaily. 

“Good-bye, Miss Lou!” 

Oh, how he hoped it would not be good-bye for long! As 
she nodded again and turned away, taking the sunlight 
with her, the intrusive image of Yellow Legs faded from 
Stephen’s mind. 

True, as he stood, following her with his eyes, those legs 
kept pace beside her. But he had seen her once again, and 
she had remembered him! He looked at the clock on St. 
Paul’s Church, and found that eleven minutes were still to 
spend in banishment ere he might learn his fate. 

Soon he found himself in a quiet backwater of the great 
seething Market, under an angle of the Piazza, at the 
mouth of a quiet street. Two giant drays piled high with 
crates walled off the roar and racket, and a wall of sooty 
stuccoed brick rose forbiddingly upon the other hand. 

“I say!” An active figure dodged under a lowered dray- 
tail, and Yellow Legs, with a bright-hard stare, met 
Stephen’s eyes again. “I saw you hook it and followed 
you,” said the pleasant voice, deliberately. “Do you twig 
why?” 

“I don’t,” said Stephen, “nor I dunno as I wants.” 

“Whether you want to know or not,” said Yellow Legs, 
“Fm going to tell you!” He thrust both hands as deep as 
they would go into the pockets of his buckled knee-breeches, 
revealing that the lining of his queer blue gown matched 
the yellow hose in hue; and went on with his red mouth 
curling and his bright dark eyes challenging: “Because 
though you funked saying it just now, you had got some¬ 
thing to say.” 

“What about?” growled Stephen sulkily. 

“About my clothes,” said the Bluecoat. “And we chaps 
of Christ’s make it a rule to thrash cads who cheek us. 
See?” 

“Ye do, does ye?” Stephen drawled. 

“We do. Twig these?” He unpocketed a hand and 
twiddled his clerical lappets, then tucked up his gown and 


326 The Pipers of the Market Place 

performed a pirouette on the oozy paving-stones: “And 
this?” He secured the skirts of his gown swiftly under his 
waist-strap, and leap-frogged over a row of iron posts 
planted along the kerb. . . . “And this, and this, and this, 
and this!” He repeated the achievement. “Now what do 
you think of ’em? Don’t be too shy to say!” 

“I thinks,” said Stephen, as Yellow Legs stood menac¬ 
ingly facing him, his shoulders squared, his chin tucked 
down, his dark eyes well alight, “I thinks, though I seen 
some wenches once, dressed somethin’ someways like ye— 
I never clapped me eyes on a boy in blue-an’-yellow petti¬ 
coats afore. And I says to myself-” 

“Get on with it!” 

“You’re in a hurry, bain’t you?” A sluggish thorn of 
anger was rankling in Stephen’s mind. “I says to myself, 
‘this here young wag be bound to belong to th’ Show- 
folk-’ ” 

“You said that, did you, Hayseed?” 

“That’s what I said, young Yellow Legs!” 

As the epithet left Stephen’s lips, bright candles flashed 
before him, and a set of hard young knuckles hit him pain¬ 
fully on the nose. . . . 

“Hit back! You’ve had the coward’s blow!” he heard 
the other saying, as he answered, sniffing back the blood 
that trickled down his upper lip. 

“Coward yerself! Put up yer dooks, young Yellow 
Legs, if you wants a hammering.” 

And heard, through the singing in his ears, the Bluecoat 
cry: 

“Come on!” 


12 

In less time than it takes to write the line, the quiet 
backwater was crowded with amateurs of pugilism desirous 
of seeing a fight. Vanmen and carmen, still masticating 
the last mouthful of breakfast, with a haggler or so who 
for sport’s sake was content to sacrifice business, an 
aproned stable-helper and some nondescript Market-loafers, 
had gravitated to the comer sheltered by the barrier of 
cabbage-crates. 




How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 327 

“Pitch in an’ give it ’im, my boy!” said a burly, blue-eyed 
drayman, patting Stephen heavily on the back with a hand 
like a bacon-flitch. “Land ’im a rattler in the dice-box 
for that corker he fetched you on the smeller. Off wi’ yer 
coat an’ let me git a bit of a feel at yer muscle!” He padded 
and pinched Stephen’s upper arm knowingly and added: 
“Dunno as I’d mind backin’ you to beat, to the tune of a 
couple o’ quarterns, supposin’ any genelman present ’ud like 
to take the bet ?” 

“Done with you, Bob!” A blue-chinned man in a shaggy 
cap and greatcoat smote Stephen’s champion on the back 
with an exceedingly unwashed hand. “Though the lush 
is as good as inside of me, my fancy bein’ a Nailer. ’Cos 
w’y? they’re always fightin’, them young Bluecoats from 
Crisospittle, an’ when they ain’t they’re lookin’ abart for 
some fresh chap to fight. Reg’ler young Bengal tigers, 
that’s the name I calls ’em.” 

“You’d ’ave to fight yourself, Joe Baines, if so be you 
’ad to wear such does. Braybrooke, this feller’s name is,” 
said a stableman, defensively, “Grandson to Mr. Bray¬ 
brooke of the Royal ‘Portico’ Hotel. Spends ’is ’olidays 
with ’is grandad reg’ler—an’ the Market knows it! Why, 
that chap’ll ’ave ’arf a dozen mills in a day wi’ young wag¬ 
goners an’ carmen and porters; an’ go ’ome to ’is grub at 
’is grandfather’s as mild as a dish of milk.” 

“And there’s nothink milder than that is!” said the burly, 
blue-eyed drayman. 

“Not than the London article, there ain’t,” confirmed the 
stableman. “Hark at him cussin’ an’ swearin’!” he added 
with admiration. “Ain’t he a lovely specimen of a reg’lar 
model boy!” 

For Bluecoat was vigorously resisting attempts to relieve 
him of his long-tailed upper garment. 

“Leave me alone, you meddling fools!” Stephen heard 
him angrily exclaim. “We chaps never strip for a mill 
with a cad. Now, Hayseed, are you ready?” 

And Stephen, peeled to his trousers and shirt, was facing 
the bright dark eyes. As he braced himself behind his 
guard, mindful of Malvina’s teaching, knowing his oppo¬ 
nent’s longer reach a source of peril to himself, and grin- 


328 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

ning faces ringed about, and the shuffle and scrape of iron- 
nailed boots sounded on the slushy pavement, a curious 
shudder ran through him from his scalp down the middle 
of his back. . . . 

For over the heads of the jostling crowd looked the 
strange pale eyes of Mackilliveray . . . Mackilliveray, as 
Stephen had seen him under the gas-lamp at King’s Cross. 
An instant, and the red-haired man with the bulldog face 
had vanished. . . . Stephen met the Bluecoat’s confident 
smile as, toe to toe, they squared. 

And then the shuddering gave place to a tingling joy in 
battle. He was Bluecoat’s master, despite the feints and 
sparrings of that confident youth. . . . Stephen would 
never, he felt assured, be obliged to summon to his aid the 
choicest of Malvina’s secrets; the leads, counters and cross¬ 
counters, the upper-cuts, jolts and twisty ones, by which 
she set such store. 

There would never be a chance to crown a really scientific 
hammering, with Casgey’s Feint, and Swaffham, for a 
proper finish up. 

There would—A blow on the side of the jaw rattled 
among Stephen’s sound white teeth, and jarred down 
Stephen’s backbone, raising a laugh and painting a grin on 
the crowding faces round. And the man in the shaggy 
greatcoat was calling time. . . . The first round was over, 
and the drayman was dabbing a rank wet sponge across 
Stephen’s mouth and nose. 

“It’ll stop the bleedin’, that’s that it will!” said the phil¬ 
anthropic sponge-wielder, as he dropped the sponge in the 
water-pail, which had come from a cab-stand near. “Pluck 
up an’ don’t make me sorry as wot I’ve been an’ backed 
you 1” 

“You lea’ me be!” growled Stephen, returning to the 
fray. . . . Yellow Legs was pretty sure to try another jaw- 
hook. Well, Casgey’s Feint had been invented to bring 
hook-hitters to shame. You lured your man to try it again, 
—you took one short step backwards. . . . He swung 
round with the drive of his own blow, and then you Swaff- 
hamed him. . . . 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 329 

And that is how it came about. Flushed with the cer¬ 
tainty of victory, Yellow Legs tried the hook again with 
all his strength behind. And at the proper moment Stephen 
stepped smartly backwards. His adversary twisted like a 
dipping top-—Stephen let out with S waff ham—and Yellow 
Legs, gyrating twice, sat down on the slimy stones. 

“Time’s up!” cried Stephen’s backer, as the man in the 
shaggy greatcoat made play with the clanking stable-pail 
and the horsey-smelling sponge. But Yellow Legs was sick 
and limp, and white as his clerical lappets, with a right eye 
badly swollen and closed, and a pain under the left short 
ribs. . . . 

“Tell that chap he’s got the best of me! Pull me up on 
my legs, some of you!” he sputtered, making right-armed 
passes in the air indicative of his willingness to shake 
hands. 

“I hope I haven’t hurt ye bad,” said Stephen, as their 
palms encountered. 

“Not much. I say, but you can box!” returned Bluecoat, 
feeling his ear. 

“I knowed as much when I see him!” asserted Stephen’s 
drayman. 

“I wish / ’ad,” growled the shaggy man, clinking some 
coins in his hand. “ ’Ark ’ere, Young Tommy Sayers,” he 
went on, as Stephen, getting into his jacket again, looked at 
him in astonishment. “ ‘Casgey’s Feint’ both far and wide 
is pop’lar with the Fancy. But S waff ham atop, for the 
knock-out, was Casgey’s Patent, see? Kep’ to hisself, the 
knack of it, not showed to pals an’ patrons. Now puttin’ 
the question plump an’ plain, ’oo gev’ the tip to you?” 

“Tip, sir?” asked Stephen, timidly, for curious eyes were 
on him, and the shaggy man, breathing onions and rum, 
kept coming unpleasantly near. 

“Ah! You’re awake, my codger,” rallied the shaggy 
one, winking. “Come, out with it! Who taught of you to 
use your mauleys? Eh?” 

“My mother, sir,” said Stephen. 

“Carry me ’ome!” gasped the shaggy man as the bystand¬ 
ers broke into a roar. Only Bluecoat blackened and scowled, 


330 The Pipers of the Market Place 

as Stephen, scarlet to the hair, stood ringed with hilarious 
faces, whose crinkled eyes wept tears of mirth and whose 
mouths stretched from ear to ear. 

“Now then, what’s all this? . . . Fighting again in the 
Market ?” 

The gruff voice of a Bow Street constable scattered the 
snickering crowd. And Stephen, pierced by the horrible 
thought that Mr. James Buckley must be waiting,—dived 
through its jostling elements, and ran for his very life. 

13 

“Which, when the quarter-hour goes and no Shaver don’t 
answer to ’is number, you might ’ave floored me,” said B. 
Faggis, “with a stick o’ salary. My Missus puts her ’and to 
’er ’eart an’ says: 'He’s bin run over!’ an’ Mr. James he 
shakes his ’ead an’ goes off wiv’ ’is yennum to the knab.” 

“Say ‘ ’is money to the Bank’ an’ adone with it,” 
rebuked Mrs. Faggis sternly, “instead o’ tippin’ that low 
back-talk whenever you open your mouth. How do you 
know as Mr. James won’t say as ’ow your bad example has 
to do with the boy cornin’ back so late, in a perfect mask of 
gore? Don’t let him tell me it wasn’t his fault! He’d 
ought to ha’ knowed better, with as grand a woman for his 
mother as he’s got, and that blessed baby at ’ome. . . 
And Mrs. Faggis, forgetful of her clothes, and wrought 
upon by her feelings, subsided on an empty crate and dis¬ 
solved in a flood of tears. 

“Come, come! What’s all this fuss about?” said the 
wheezy voice of Mr. Buckley, returning from a waddle 
round the Market,^ with his granddaughter tripping at his 
side. “Don’t be frightened, Pretty!” Lou having cried 
out at the ensanguined countenance of Stephen. “The 
boy’s been fighting. Haven’t you, you young dog? Don’t 
dare to lie to me!” 

“He didn’t lie, Gramp,” cried Lou, distressed. “He 
hasn’t even spoken.” 

“Well, let him speak!” cried the stout old man, “if he’s 
anything to say for himself!” 

“I didn’t go to do it, sir,” cried Stephen in desperation. 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 331 

for Mr. James with his wallet in his hand had now returned 
from the Bank, and Groggard, with a hammer and a mouth¬ 
ful of brads had added himself to the audience, “but for 
the young gentleman a-follering me up, and arsking me 
what I thought of his toggery? an’ me a-sayin’ Show Folk 
wore such, an’ givin’ him the nama o’ Yellow Legs and him 
a-landin’ me a hit on the nose, ’twouldn’t ha’ happened at 
all” 

“What's this about clothes? . . . Let nobody tell me 
said old Mr. Buckley sternly, “that young Ted Braybrooke 
from the ‘Portico’ Hotel isn’t at the bottom of this! He 
squires my girl to Maiden Lane and brings her back to the 
Market-” 

“He was very kind, dear Gramp,” pleaded Lou, “and 
took great care of me!” 

“And then,” puffed the vexed old gentleman, “he goes 
off to pick a quarrel—as his Blustering, Bullying habit is,— 
and lights on this unfortunate boy. Strikes him in the 
face, forces him to fight, and beats him to a jelly!” 

“Please, sir-” exploded Stephen, unable to bear the 

pity in Lou’s brown eyes. 

“Beats him to a jelly,” obstinately pursued the irascible 
old gentleman. “And what I say is, that the Police should 
put an end to this!” 

“Please, sir, he didn’t beat me! . . . ’Twas t’other way 
about!” protested Stephen. 

“Come, now, stow that!” growled Groggard. “You’ve 
been warned about lyin’, you know.” 

“You’re tellin’ the truth, I’d like to think, young 
Shaver,” whispered Faggis. “But if you ain’t-” 

“But if you’re not,” cried Mrs. Faggis. “Stop! . . . 
For your mother’s sake, an’ the darling babe’s! Before 
you’re struck by lightnin’, as happened to my Great Aunt 
Gann’s third sister’s youngest son. ...” 

“Come, come,” said kind James Buckley, “give the boy 
a chance to answer. How did you fare with Braybrooke, 
lad? . . . That’s what I want to know.” 

“He bled me nose ’fore the first round, sir,” asserted 
Stephen, stoutly, “an’ he caught me a nasty crack on the 
chin, but he never beat me at all. ... I beat him , sir,—I 





332 The Pipers of the Market Place 

did indeed! The Market men ’ud tell you! Wi’ Casgey’s 
Feint in the second round, an’ Swaffham to finish off.” 

“S’welp you, Bob?” cried the hawker, rubbing his hands 
delightedly. 

‘‘I believe him,” said James Buckley, “if none of you 
others do.” 

“It’s true,” said Groggard, who had stepped aside to 
speak to one of the costers. “Cholley, the drayman, backed 
him and won four pots o’ porter. An’ they asks, ‘Who 
taught you boxing?’ An’ what do you think he says?” . . . 

Stephen, the focus of many eyes, twisted his cap and 
wriggled. . . . 

“Who did you tell them taught you, boy?” said the voice 
of Mr. James. 

“I—I’ll tell if I may whisper, sir,” faltered Stephen, 
blushing scarlet. 

“Whisper, then,” said the tall, thin man. “We won’t 
let anybody hear. . . 

And Stephen, drawing a long deep breath and screwing 
his mouth into a button, breathed into the large fatherly 
ear under the tufts of thin brown hair: 

“My mother, sir . . . As used to live . . . With a 
lady married to a perfeshnal . . . Casgey by name as 
used to win. . . . Purses put up at Fairs.” 

“I understand! Indeed, I had had a hint of it from 
your friend Faggis. . . . And you do your teacher credit,” 
returned Buckley in an undertone. He patted Stephen 
on the shoulder, and straightened his tall, thin body. “Now 
cut away and wash your face,” said the voice that Stephen 
loved. “I have had my talk with Faggis, and you and your 
mother and the baby are welcome at the Nurseries, Sidcup, 
as soon as you can come. . . . Monday if you like.” Buck- 
ley went on, “The cottage is next to Groggard’s, and clean 
as a new beehive, you may trust Mrs. G. for that. What 
furniture you’re like to want, Faggis is going to lend you. 
You’ll have eight shillings a week to start as a boy about 
the houses: Mrs. Braby’s wage will be eighteen, with a 
chance to make it more.” 

“Hooroar!” yelled Stephen at the top of his voice. 

“And put these five shillings in your pocket,” said Buck- 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 333 

ley Senior, thrusting two plump half-crowns into the boy’s 
hand. “One is for taking Braybrooke down, which he 
wanted pretty badly, and the other ’cause I called you a 
liar, when you’re nothing of the sort. You’re a tough 
young sapling of British oak, that’s what you are, young 
Braby. Give him a shake o’ the hand, my pet. He be¬ 
longs to the Nurseries now!” And as Lou laughingly 
obeyed: “Now, Jemmy! Breakfast—breakfast!” cried the 
stout, lively, kind old man, and whisked them both away. 

“An’ tip us your fist, young ’un,” said Groggard, with 
surly kindness, “being one of us now, as the Governor said. 
Tell your mother she can count on my wife. With Mrs. 
Groggard for a neighbour she won’t go far for com’ny.” 

“Th-thank you, sir!” gasped Stephen, dizzy with all this 
joy. 

“An’ give the Missus a kiss, Shaver,” cried the hawker, 
slapping Stephen on the shoulder, “as nothin’ but ’er 
good old ’art made ’er come down on you jest now! 
Another on the other side,” he urged as blushing Stephen 
gingerly pecked the wholesome cheek Mrs. Faggis tendered 
for the salute. “Which bein’ done, an’ that there blood 
sluiced off yer dial, Shaver, we’ll see if that Bluecoat bloke 
’as left you dominoes enough to chew.” 

Whereupon, Groggard obliging with a towel and a bowl 
of water, Mrs. Faggis’s deft and motherly hands cleansed 
Stephen of the tokens of the fray. And then, as the 
hawker repeatedly affirmed that the ‘Before and After’ in 
Bow Street was the only chop-house in the Market where 
‘a proper tightener’ could be had, Mrs. Faggis, shaking out 
her skirts and straightening her bonnet, accompanied her 
husband and their youthful friend to this lauded house of 
call. 

Its narrow swing-doors, adorned without by concave 
metal mirrors (in which entering clients beheld themselves 
reflected as abnormally lean), and furnished within by 
others that enlarged the proportions of departing customers 
(after a fashion suggestive of the expanding nature of the 
fare), neighboured those of an equally famous public-house 
at the Russell Street end of Bow Street,. whose ale 
porter carried down the food consumed within. And the 


334 


The Pipers of the Market Place 

size of its sausages, chump-chops and steaks, Finnan had¬ 
docks and baked potatoes, had, as B. Faggis feelingly ob¬ 
served, ‘to be felt to be believed/ 

The place, with its rows of tables, and narrow backless 
benches, and its huge spittoons making islands in the saw¬ 
dust covering the floor, was full of Market people, all 
eating, talking, and smoking; and, though crowded, noisy, 
and odorous, seemed to Stephen a luxurious resort. 

The stimulating influence of a huge chump-chop, crowned 
with two sizzling sausages, washed down with coffee, hot 
and strong, and followed by a wedge of apple pie, embold¬ 
ened him to laugh and talk more freely than his wont was, 
and erelong he had embarked on a full account of the bat¬ 
tle with the Bluecoat boy. 

This ended, amidst the comments of his hearty host and 
hostess, it was the turn of Faggis to take the conversational 
floor, and he favoured Stephen with instances in his per¬ 
sonal experience, of youths who had entered Nurseries at 
five shillings a week and up’ards, and ended in a blaze of 
effluence as Growers on their own Grounds. 

“But don’t ye set your mind too much on Money,” 
warned Mrs. Faggis, “nor yet on Land, but be content wi’ 
what good may come your way. And forget some silly 
things I may ha’ said, about its being a ’ardship for a boy 
who’s got gentlefolks’ blood in his veins not to study wi’ 
gentlemen’s sons.” 

“Who cares about learning with gentlemen’s sons!” cried 
Stephen, flushed and radiant. “I can be a Grower for the 
Market, and a gentleman just the same. An’ I’ll grow such 
roses as never you saw, an’ I’ll win Prizes an’ Prizes. . . . 
And the very best rose of all of ’em shall have ‘Miss Lou’ 
for a name.” 

“You’re bounceable enough to breed Prize Bullocks for 
the Show,” said Faggis, “an’ between you an’ me an’ the 
Missus, I lays as you’ll grow that Rose an’ many another, 
too! Have no cove showed you Whittin’ton’s Stone at the 
bottom of the Hill at ’Ighgate? Not the Harchway, but 
the Old North Road? ‘Turn again, Stephenson, Grower 
of Roses!’ That’s what the bloomin’ Bow Bells might one 
day be a-ringing for you!” 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 335 

“Whittin’ton ’twas,” smiled Mrs. Faggis, “as married 
on his master’s daughter. Leastways that’s ’ow my Great 
Aunt Gann used to spin the tale to me. . . .” 

“An’ I will too! . . . I tell ’e as I will! I’ve made my 
mind up to it!” Stephen thumped the table with his fist, 
and his eyes glowed like hot coals. 

“What will you do, my deary?” said Mrs. Faggis ad¬ 
miringly. 

“Don’t smash the ’ome up, Shaver!” said Faggis, wink¬ 
ing over his porter-pot. “Ullo! Does that lucifer-match- 
’eaded bloke ’appen to be a pal o’ yours? There by the 
door. Beck’nin’ an’ makin’ signs. It’s a face I seen at 
Tolleymead. An’ if ’twasn’t much good to your father, 
it’ll be none to your mother’s son.” 

And Stephen, painfully craning his neck in the indicated 
direction, saw over rows of strangers’ heads, all eating 
and talking as they ate, the bulldog jowl and the prominent 
stare of the red-haired Mackilliveray, and blundered up as 
he beckoned 'Come out’ and squeezed his way to the door. 

It had been real, the figure under the gas in the bustle 
of King’s Cross Station, nor when Stephen had stood up 
stripped to fight, had a dream-face mingled with the crowd. 
The man was there in his moleskin clothes, with his dread¬ 
nought coat, and bundles; and the shovel and pick he had 
carried with him on that journey of years before. . . . 

Now he said in the slow, thick, heavy voice with the 
well-known burr of the West Midlands: 

“I’ve a message fur ye, young narbor”—he was much 
less florid than usual, and the whites of his^ queer pale 
staring eyes were no longer veined with red to take wi 
ye back to Tolleymead. I’ve follered ye t’ gie it, aw th’ 
way fro’ King’s Cross Station wheer I’d gone to tram fur 
the North. Wools’t take it?” 

“Ay!” Stephen nodded. 

“Yo’ll mind o’ th’ other message? How the man as 
hung round th’ cowyard gate were goin’ fur good an^ 
all. ... Eh, narbor? Though he broke of his word an 
come back again,” said Mackilliveray, “like a domned 
blaggard! . . . Tell yer mother as I says yon man is sorry 
for what he done!” 


336 The Pipers of the Market Place 

‘Til tell her.” 

“Thankee, narbor!” He did not rumble in the throat 
with secret laughter now. “An’ tell her, wi’ respects to 
words she spoke as cannowt be forgotten,—as I’d gi’ my 
blood to ha’ been th’ man as said nowt, an’ went away 1” 

“ ‘And went away. ... I won’t forget. . . . May I go 
now, sir?” asked Stephen. 

“Theer’s a bit more, young narbor, with respects to the 
man as stayed. The man ’as done your mother harm by 
writin’ onsigned letters—the man ’as made a dubous use 
o’ the brass as had come his way. Tell yo’r mother I 
reckons to cure yon man o’ follerin’ an’ honest woman. 
As I’ve got my grip on his win’pipe hard,—an’ shannot 
lowse it agen! Yo’ll none forgit? . . 

“I won’t forget.” 

“Says yo’ onto yo’r mother,—‘Mackilliveray ha’ swore 
’fore the Face o’ God t’ master yon man or dee!’ ” 

The crushing weight of the powerful hand was lifted 
from Stephen’s shoulder. The burly figure in its navvy’s 
dress swung round and tramped away. He held his red- 
haired head erect, and squared his heavy shoulders, and 
carried himself like a man resolved to keep the vow he had 
made. 


14 

When the latch of the garden-gate clicked back and 
Stephen came up the pathway, a bright fire burned in the 
keeping-room, and his mother moved busily about. 

Newly washed garments hung on a line, drying in the 
heat of the fire. Cupboards stood open and drawers were 
pulled out, there was litter of packing on the floor. 

There was something agog, and the conviction of this 
would have stimulated the boy’s curiosity. But not at this 
moment. It was stamped on his face that Stephen had 
something to tell. . . . 

His blue eyes shone like jewels. His fresh round cheeks 
were crimson. He breathed quickly, as though he had been 
running, and his mouth kept on widening with smiles. . . . 

“Yo’re lackin’ fur wind,” said Malvina in her grave ma- 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 337 

ternal accents, as he kissed her, smiling and panting, and 
hung his cloth cap on the peg. 

“I were late,” he said, “an’ I run for it,—knowin’ as 
you’d be waitin’. . . . Mother, I’ve something to tell you.” 

She stopped him by holding up her hand: 

“Yo’ll tell yo’r tale when I’ve told yo’ mine,” she said 
with the regal gesture that her shadow turned to mimicry 
on the whitewashed wall behind. “I be a-flittin’ out o’ 
here.” 

“ ‘Flittin’!’ Now, that be a belter!” 

“Dunna say as yo’r mother be lyin’.” 

“Why, didn’t you mean it jokin’ like?” 

“ ’Tis th’ Lord’s own truth!” she said. 

“Where be we goin’, mother?” he asked, his bright blue 
eyes dilated, and joy and something like dismay striving 
together in his face. 

“Where but to Faggis,” she said with a sigh, “till us can 
git a biding.” 

Stephen swung his arm above his head and laughed in 
sheer delight. 

“Then listen. . . . I’ve the offer of a young lad’s job 
in Mr. Buckley’s nurseries. An’ says Buckley, if my mother 
’ud be willin’ to come, he’d find her work to do. Eighteen 
shillin’ to week for you, wi’ th’ use of half a cottage, if 
you’d cook and clean for two or three men—an’ eight shil¬ 
lin’ for me! ‘An’ if you’d like to start to-once,’ says he, 
‘come up o’ Monday.’ An’ Faggis’ll put in furniture to set 
you up in the house.” 

“ ’Tis the Hand o’ th’ Lord,” said Malvina, with awe, 
“as helpeth them as trusts Him. Long ha’ I dwelled wi’ 
my husband and my babes in this house as were my home. 
. . . Now th’ silver cord of love be loosed and the bowl 
of wedlock broken, so I’ll take my bundle and my staff 
and marry my foot to th’ road. The litlin’ fares along 
wi’ me, as cannowt do wi’out her mother. But ’tis fur yo’ 
to pick betwixt the Market job and the life of a rich man’s 
son. . . . Yo’r father sends yo’ word to choose. Look 
me i’ th’ face,” said Malvina. “The hard-got penny or 
the heavy purse? . . . Which shall it be, my man?” 

He leaped to her and hugged her round the neck. 


338 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“The Market and my mother!” 

“I’d ha’ put my mother first if I’d been yo’,” she said as 
she returned the embrace. “Sit down an’ take yo’r supper 
now,” she bade, and set a meal before him, the lavish 
sumptuousness of which took Stephen’s breath away. 

“Meat an’ taters an’ dumplin’ on Saturday night! By 
jings!” he cried in wonder, as she heaped his plate and 
bade him haste, for she had work to do. “Ironin’, I’ll lay.” 
He wagged his head at the garments pendent from the 
clothes-line. She nodded assent, setting her firm lips over 
the anguish eating at her heart. 

“Ironin’, an’ some orra things. . . . Nay, no! I’ve had 
my supper. But don’t fare to bolt th’ meat like that. 
Chamble it proper, do.” 

To 'chamble’ meant to masticate, in her West Midland 
dialect. When he had finished she took his hand and led 
him to the cradle-side. 

“Kneel down an’ promise,” her voice was stern, “as yo’ll 
be good to the litlin’. Boy an’ man, as long as th’ Lord’ll 
let yo’ dwell on th’ earth!” 

“I promise, mother,” he whispered back, awed by her 
solemn manner. 

“Before the Face o’ your Father in Heaven. Say th’ 
words after me.” 

He repeated the words in a mumbling way. 

“Say ‘Amen!’ ” 

“Amen!” 

“An’ yo’ll remember?” 

He nodded assent. Her powerful hand released him, 
and he rose up. 

“Now yo’ll get to bed,” she bade him, “for we’ll take 
th’ road o’ Monday while Tolleymead be routin’ in th’ 
blankets, an’ I’ll need to ha’ th’ place to myseln. For I’ll 
ha’ no temptin’ Providence by cleanin’ house o’ Sunday, 
an’ if I dunna do it now it wunna be fitty when we go.” 

“When we go. ... We are going. . . . On Monday — 
on Monday!” The words were running in Stephen’s ears 
like the burden of a pleasant song. He fell asleep to the 
sound of them, despite the household noises—the opening 
and shutting of cupboards and drawers, the swish of the 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 339 

broom and the clank of the pail and the thud of the iron 
on the board. 

But in his mother’s ears as she worked, her spoken words 
were ringing: 

“The silver cord of love be loosed and the bowl of wed¬ 
lock broken. . . .” Could love be Love that died of even 
a mortal wound like hers ? 

And One had said: ‘Whom God hath joined let not man 
put asunder. . . / Ay, but the man had lightly broken 
the oath he had sworn to her. . . . 

Oh, at what cost she must keep her vow never to touch 
the money! For years to come, unless Death were a friend, 
she must lie on the bed she had made. 

Tramp in the mud while Braby rode by, sober, well 
dressed and handsome. Even as her dazed and wondering 
eyes had seen him some hours before. . . . 

Could he have known how she felt when, he stood, such 
a different man, in the doorway! Could he have dreamed 
how her heart had thrilled back to the passionate love of 
her youth! 

Could he have dreamed of the torture she knew at the 
thought of her place at his table—her post at the head of 
his household given to his sister’s illegitimate child! 

Would he have cared, or mocked at her? He had spoken 
of her duty. It was terrible to know that perhaps he had 
right upon his side. 

She felt torn in two between Malvina his wife, whom 
God had made one flesh with him, and that other Malvina, 
who pined to be free of the home he had made a prison. 

... In her eyes her Duty took shape as a hag who stood 
in the chimney-corner, narrow and meagre, pointing the 
way with a bony, wrinkled hand. Rebellion rose in her 
breast as she worked with her pail and mop and scrub¬ 
bing-brush. . . . He had broken his word. He had cast 
her off. She was free for ever of his bonds! She clanked 
with her pail and she trundled her mop in the face of the 
hag by the hearth-side. And she sang as she had not sung 
since the boy in the attic was a suckling babe. . 

‘Over the hills and far away’ was the beginning and end 


340 The Pipers of the Market Place 

of the ballad. But the hag in the corner beside the hearth 
never lowered her pointing finger. Presently it would be 
Duty’s turn. She can always bide her time. 

15 

They spent Sunday together quietly and took a walk 
after dinner. It led them to the churchyard where Mal¬ 
vina’s babies lay. They would be lonely when their mother 
had gone. ... It seemed treachery to leave their little 
bodies—though the innocent souls were safe in Heaven— 
in their beds of oozy clay. But the living two had the 
stronger claim on the love and service of their mother. 
Her yellow-haired lad and her black-eyed maid were all to 
Malvina now. 

She slept heavily on Sunday night, though Stephen lay 
wakeful in the attic. When the day-brow lifted and the 
eastern sky was banded with primrose yellow, and the 
blackbird whistled his reveille, they had eaten their Passover 
meal. All the crumbs and fragments they had to spare 
they scattered on the window-sills and doorstep, in parting 
tribute to the numerous birds that the coppice and orchard 
owned. 

The thrushes and blackbirds, the robins and tits, that 
Malvina had loved and befriended. Would their songs be 
as sweet and their plumage as brave, Stephen wondered, 
when his mother had gone ? 

Would they, too, fly away when the cottage remained 
silent and locked and empty? Would some evil befall these 
innocent things, and what of the old grey fox? 

There were cubs in the earth in the coppice at the bottom 
of the garden. October had passed without peril to these, 
but what of the days to come? Stephen asked the ques¬ 
tion in his heart, but was wiser than to put it to Malvina, 
as he climbed to the top of the rearward porch and set 
there an old tin can. 

This relic, superannuated, but purposely kept bright, was 
the signal employed in emergency. When from his sleep- 
ing-loft under the thatch, John Pover, narrowing his long- 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 341 

sighted eyes, caught sight of the battered milk-can, he 
would plod, with the footsteps of a faithful friend, to 
Malvina Braby’s door. 

Stephen always stoned down the old tin can from the 
porch when no longer wanted. Hence the many dints in 
its bulging sides and the hole that the light shone through. 
He whistled now as he set it up, though it meant good-bye 
to John Pover, and the sturdy, faithful friendship that had 
stood the test of years. 

Oh! the rapture of seeing at last, the narrow horizon 
widening. . . . The huge world opening before one’s eyes 
with the promise of things that were new. . . . Work in a 
market-garden ground in the pay of Lou Buckley’s father! 
—the tall grey man with the smiling eyes and the haggard, 
friendly face. . . . Stephen would have chosen such a 
career above any that Fortune might offer. Little appeal 
there was in the thought of being a rich man’s son! 

For his heart was brimful of the innocent hope of seeing 
the child he worshipped; of living near Lou in a garden 
of flowers that should blossom the whole year round. 

How little they know us who love us best! Would Mal¬ 
vina have thought it of Stephen, that the child he had 
barely mentioned to her was the core of his secret heart? 
That since the day she had given him the rose, he had fos¬ 
tered, waking and sleeping, that sweet, impossible, exquisite 
dream of an Eden shared with Lou. 

They waited,—Pover did not come. He lay groaning 
abed that morning in the iron grip of the first attack of 
his winter rheumatism. And Mrs. Pover—fighting the foe 
with liniment and hot flannels—had forgotten to glance 
from the window, as the ritual ordained she should do. 

“John bain’t cornin’. Belikely, ’tis all for the best, said 
Malvina, and shut down the windows. Her lips were close- 
set as she locked the back-door with its ponderous, seldom- 
used key. For to go without bidding the Povers farewell 
was a sin against Friendship and Gratitude. Unnatural, 
heartless, cold-blooded, unkind, were the epithets deserved 

by the act. , 

Her merciless code left no chink of escape, bhe was 


342 The Pipers of the Market Place 

judged and condemned by her conscience, as she cast a last 
glance round the walls of the home she was leaving for ever 
to-day. 

A letter written by Stephen’s hand in large, round, boy¬ 
ish characters, and signed by his mother, was headed ‘To 
the Landlord.’ This was the gist of the scrawl. . . . The 
house was given up from date, no longer being wanted by 
the tenant. The quarter’s rent that might be claimed in 
lieu of longer notice, would be sent by his obediently, “Mal¬ 
vina Calderwood.” 

Then Malvina took the hammer and a nail from the 
drawer of the old kitchen-table and nailed the letter to the 
table with a stroke that buried the nail-head in the wood. 
And the act seemed the snapping of the final link of her 
chain of wedded bondage; the straggling letters of her 
maiden name made her think of her marriage-day. 

She was no richer now than she had been when she 
mated with the grazier’s foreman. The little hair-trunk 
with the dimmed brass nails held all she owned in the 
world. The Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress , the cup with the 
wedding couple, and the plate with the bright pink rose on 
it, went into the little hair-trunk. The moth-eaten patches 
on its top and sides were the baldness of faithful service. 
Like the other things, it had been a gift from the woman 
who had been her friend. 

Two bundles and the little hair-trunk held all the pos¬ 
sessions of the travellers. Their clothes, and such food and 
household stores as remained, they took with them. 

But nothing that in the remotest sense might be counted 
as Braby’s property. Even the book about Sea Rovers and 
the Robinson Crusoe were left. 

* * * * * 

4 

They had plotted to catch the Monday morning train that 
left the junction at New Marnet for King’s Cross Station 
at 6 a.m., stopping at Sowgate at 6.io. 

Stephen grinned as he pictured the ploughman’s dismay 
when the fact of their flight was made clear to him. . . . 
He imagined him stumping up the garden-path in his 
clumping iron-toed boots. He could see the leathern ridges 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 343 

of surprise into which he would wrinkle his forehead. How 
his eyes would round in astonishment and his mouth take 
the shape of a whistle when he found that the nest was 
empty—Malvina and her fledglings flown. 

Stephen was grinning still as he locked the frontward 
door of the cottage with the heavy old key that might have 
belonged to a Church or a Town Hall. 

“Hide th’ key in th’ hole that goes under th’ step,” said 
Malvina, and there he hid it. John Pover would know 
where to look for the key, when at the last he came. . . . 

Stephen was still chuckling at the picture in his mind 
when he bowed his sturdy shoulders to the weight of the 
little old brass-nailed hair-trunk it fell to his lot to bear. 
His mother carried the baby, her basket and both the bun¬ 
dles, as she led the way down the garden-path and paused 

at the garden gate. ... .111 

The spiders had spun over the gate in the night, and dew- 
drops hung thick on the cobwebs. She must break through 
the glittering barrier before she could open the gate. . . . 
She sighed at the ruthlessness of the act, as the gate swung 
backwards on its hinges, and a delicate shower of diamond 
drops were scattered on the bricks of the path. 

She passed through, and Stephen followed. As the gate 
clashed to after him a curious shock went through her. 
She wavered, but would not look round. She went for¬ 
ward resolutely to the five-barred gate that led from the 
road to the wheatacres. She opened it—and then they were 
on the road, their faces turned to the north. Where Tolley- 
mead Lane crossed the Tolley Brook Road they would take 
the eastward turning that led to the station of the long 
white gates where Stephen had waited for Death. 

Little thought Stephen of Death to-day, as he trudged 
after the stately figure that moved on with its vigorous up¬ 
right grace, under the burden it bore. 

Over her faded lavender print gown was a shawl ot 
rough grey woollen. She had drawn it close over her bosom 
and g hips and knotted it gipsy-wise Thus one hand and 
arm were free to take the bigger, heavierbundle a:nd the 
second bundle she carried in the hand of the arm that sup- 
ported the child. 


344 The Pipers of the Market Place 

Slung in the shawl, cradled by her arm, the little one 
slept soundly. So Stephen had slumbered many a time, he 
remembered as he followed now. And the sense of Beauty 
quickening in the boy found pleasure in the erect and mas¬ 
terful grace of the figure that moved before him, with the 
old straw bonnet perched over the flow of its wonderful 
wheat-red hair. 

It was one of those perfect, flawless days that are the joy 
of our English November, the sky of milky-tinged tur¬ 
quoise, the breeze the merest sigh. In the distance over 
Romney Marshes, the great gold sun was rising from lakes 
of rose and amber light that flooded south and west. 

The air was spiced with burning twitch, and the pleasant 
smell of wood-smoke, with after-savours of perishing 
leaves, apples, and blackberries and moss. There was a 
tang of frost in it that made mere breathing rapture. . . . 
London air, Malvina thought, would be less sweet than 
this! The foliage of the elms on Tolleymead Green had 
turned to rusty amber. Those of Tolley Hall and Braby- 
cott were barely sered as yet. But the poplars that grew by 
the Tolley Brook were sheerest, clearest yellow, the colour 
of new clover-honey, or pure Australian gold. 

There were trees in London parks—poor things!— 
penned within iron railings. Did they never sicken of smoke 
and grime, and yearn for the country-side? And would 
ever a London sunrise show such beauty, Malvina won¬ 
dered, stealing wistful glimpses, as she hastened along, of 
the splendour in the eastern sky. 

But as she looked she heard the sound of busy picks and 
shovels. . . . Half-way across the wheatacres there was a 
gap of many feet in the hedge. . . . 

The southward boundary was down. The railway gang 
were working. There were moving figures in moleskins 
white with chalky Hertfordshire clay. . . . One, taller, 
bigger, bulkier than the rest, stood on a heap of upcast. 
She averted her eyes, and quickened her pace; then glanced 
again and walked slower. The man was not Mackilliveray, 
the lion in her pathway! 

He was lurking somewhere in the neighbourhood. She 
had not heard the last of him. Eh, the man! with his talk 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 345 

of the shop, and the home, and the little garden behind! 
’Twas the bounden duty of a decent woman to run from 
such temptation. Thank the Lord! there would be no Mac- 
killiverays at Buckley Brothers’ Nurseries, pestering honest 
women-folk to the very verge of their wits. . . . 

“Hurry!” she cried to the boy at her heels, who was 
staring towards the gangmen. He looked back at her and 
broke into a trot that brought him to her side. 

“That’s a big chap there, on th’ ballast-heap. Fur the 
minute I thought ’twas Mackilliveray. But then I saw ’twas 
a black-haired man, an’ I minded as Mackilliveray’s gone 
North.” 

Her wide brows lowered over her stem grey eyes. 

“Who told yo’ that?” she queried. 
r “Mackilliveray an’ no one else. I seed him in London,” 
said her boy. “Three times I seed him. Once at King’s, 
Cross, an’ another time in th’ Market, an’ again at th 
‘Before and After’ shop, an’ then he spoke to me.” 

“Hanna’ I forbidden yo’ to ha’ dealin’s wi’ yon ras- 
kill?” she demanded. 

“Dealin’s I’d none,” asserted Stephen. “He gave me a 
message, that’s all.” 

“I wunna hear’t!” she told him. 

“Reckon you’d best,” said Stephen. “Him bein’ on his 
way up North, an’ cornin’ back nummore.” 

He gave the message, trotting at her side. She heard it 
out in silence. So the lion was out of her path for good. 
The Lord had heard her cry. But her road to the wide 
free world outside the little world of Tolleymead shrank 
to a sheep-track as she went, and who was standing 

there ? ^ 

Duty, the hatchet-featured hag, rose up before Malvina. 
Her meagre finger pointed back along the homeward road. 
Eh! how Malvina hated her, the sour-faced old mawther! 

“Hurry!” she cried to the boy at her side. “Do yo’ want 
to lose th’ train?” 

Lose the train. . . . Well, that was a joke, thought 
Stephen. . . . Did his mother. . . . But how she was 
walking! With the baby and the bundles, and a basket of 
apples as well. . . . They were pippins harvested m Octo- 


346 The Pipers of the Market Place 

ber from a tree in the little orchard. Stephen’s own pockets 
bulged with the fruit and his mouth was also full. 

But for that fact he would have whistled the tune to 
which he was marching. . . . The tune that the flowers 
always piped, so old, yet ever new. The tune that will 
never cease to sound in the ears that are willed to hear it. 
“Love us, Stephen, and live for us, the life that is best of 
all! . . ” 

* * * 

How slowly his mother was moving now. . . . Why, she 
walked like an old, old woman! Her proud head drooped 
on the column of her neck—her shoulders took a forward 
bend. Why ? . . . The damp earth sucking under the soles 
of her shoes seemed to do its best to delay her, the hedge¬ 
row that caught at the fringe of her shawl seemed begging 
her not to go. . . . 

She looked round. . . . Now she stopped as though 
waiting for the boy. He came up with her, smiling and 
panting. 

“ ’Tis what I feared. ... I mun go back!” What a 
mask of misery was her face! 

“For somewhat you’ve been an’ forgot?” gasped Stephen. 
“My eye! Then we will lose the train!” he thought, and 
his round face lengthened and his smiling mouth was going 
to droop at the corners, when a bright idea that occurred 
to him curled them jovially again. 

“Help me down wi’ this an’ just sit on it. I’ll run back 
in th’ inside of a minute. What be th’ thing as you found 
you’d forgot? Tell us now, mother, an’ be quick!” 

“ ’Tis what I feared ’ud come to me,” said his mother 
over the baby and the bundles. How old and hunched and 
worn she looked, and how her great eyes stared. . . . 

Her powerful hand had stayed the trunk he would have 
lowered from his shoulders. . . . But for that it would 
have seemed to the boy that she spoke to a stranger in 
him. . . . 

“ ’Tis the word I spoke to yo’r father,” she said, “when 
I telled him I’d stay in the cottage, nobbut he lived like a 
lord of the land up yonder at Brabycott House. Tvera 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 347 

night/ I said to him, ‘th’ light shall burn i’ th’ winda, 
whether or no it keeps a man from stumblin’ out in th’ 
dark.’ Ivera night! . . . An’ what of to-night when the 
Dark comes down on th’ wheatacres? Yo’ mun forgi’ me, 
Stevey lad, nobbut I be bound to turn back!” 

“Turn back!” 

He burst out blubbering and cried, through the hic¬ 
coughing sobs that shook him: 

“You shan’t turn back!” 

“I’ll be goin’ back,” said Malvina, “because o’ yon prom¬ 
ise. . . . But yo’ wi’ th’ money fur th’ railway in yo’r 
pouch—there’ll be no goin’ back for yo’! Gi’ me th’ wee 
trunk under my arm, an’ take th’ bigger bundle. Theer’s 
nought in that but duds o’ yo’r own!” She held it out to 
him. 

“I shan’t not take it,” blubbered the boy, as the trunk 
was wrested from him. He let the bundle fall to the 
ground, and shook a stubborn head. 

“Please yo’rseln what yo’ do wi’ yo’r own,” said his 
mother briefly, and passed him, setting out without more 
ado on the homeward-leading road. 

* * * * * 

Stephen blubbered until he could blubber no more. Now 
he mopped his eyes and went after her, slouching along 
under the bundle he carried instead of the trunk. He could 
see his mother moving along, overtopping the brambles of 
the hedgerow, steeped from the feet to the shoulders in 
shade, and the rest of her bright in the sun. 

Now she passed in at the five-barred gate. He heard it 
shut behind her. And he followed, still snivelling and mop¬ 
ping his eyes with the cuff of his jacket-sleeve. It had been 
such a jovial, glorious day, not only for snivelling Stevey. 
Now the beauty of it seemed darkened and blurred, and 
the warm, sweet breeze nipped cold. 

“Turn again, Stephen-son, grower of roses!” He winced 
at the mockery of the utterance. 

Life had promised such splendid things. And now the 
promise was broken. Hope had soared high, and now 
Hope’s wings were broken and trailed in the dust. There 


348 The Pipers of the Market Place 

would be nothing now but the old dull life, and the same 
drab toil for‘Stephen, following the wearisome daily round 
like a squirrel imprisoned in a cage. 

When he got home with the bundle, smoke was curling 
from the cottage chimney. The garden-gate stood on the 
latch—and the house-door stood ajar. The blinds were up. 
From within the house came the sound of the kettle boil¬ 
ing, and the rattle of the big old-fashioned key in the lock 
of the rearward door. 

He set down the bundle by the doorstep, and wondered 
what his mother was doing. When the old tin can tumbled 
down from its perch with a clatter, he understood. ... 

She came back then through the rearward door, as he 
waited on the threshold, and her face was the face of a 
stranger, and her voice was strange when she spoke: 

“Though yo’ve followed me back, my broadly lad, yo’ll 
find as yo’ve met yo’r master! Take yo’r foot in yo’r hand, 
an’ yon bundle on yo’r back, an’ follow th’ road yo’d 
choose. Hie to yon man at th’ Market, or take yo’seln off 
to Braby!” A furious scarlet banded her brow, and her 
accent seemed coarse and low. 

“I bain’t goin’ to leave you, mother!” he said, though his 
knees were shaking under him. . . . 

In the furious scarlet of her face her eyes gleamed pale 
as glass. . . . 

“We’ll see about that, my soger!” she scoffed. 

“I’ve said as I won’t,” declared Stephen. “Whatever 
’ud you an’ the baby do, wi’ no man-body about the 
place ?” 

“Proper we’ll do,” said Malvina, nodding her head at 
him sternly. “Pick up yon bundle and take yo’rself off, or 
yo’ll feel th’ weight o’ my hand.” 

“I wunna’!” said Stephen stubbornly, though his heart 
was turned to water. She swooped on him, seized him by 
the scruff and ran him down the brick-laid walk. She lifted 
him up with one powerful hand as one lifts a kitten or a 
puppy and dropped him down on the rutted ground outside 
the garden gate. 

“Pack!” . . . she said, with a scowling look, as she 
heaved the bundle after. . . . “This be no home for a lad 


How Stephen Shouldered His Burden 349 

as looks to make his way in th’ world. . . . Theer’ll niver 
be wanting folks to say as your mother be a wicked 
woman!” 

“Then they’ll be liars!” Stephen roared, choking and tin¬ 
gling with rage. 

“They’ll m’appen say it th’ more for that,” said Malvina, 
towering before him, like the Angel with the flaming sword. 
“Will yo’ go as I ha’ bid!” 

“No!” said the boy defiantly. 

“Then I’ll be bound to make yo’!” She stepped outside 
the gate, and stooped, and picked up a good-sized clod. 

“Clod away!” said Stephen, with blazing eyes. “You’ll 
not clod me into going!” 

She was a master-hand at the art. The lump sped 
straight to the mark. Another followed and another still, 
bursting wherever they hit him. . . . Covered with dust 
and fragments of mud, and with a graze on his forehead 
bleeding, Stephen danced as the missiles sped to their mark, 
but he did not beat a retreat. 

“Will yo’ go?” snarled Malvina, pausing at her work, 
all crimson and blowsed and dishevelled. She thrust back 
the hair that fell forwards as she stooped, and her fingers 
closed on a stone. An angular fragment of quarrystone, 
blown from the coping of the chimney. ... Now she 
rose up and the stone was in her hand, tangled with a lock 
of her hair. ... 

“Away wi’ yo’!” She heaved up the stone, tearing the 
curl from her temple, as though in the frenzy of her wrath 
she were numbed to the sense of pain. 

“I won’t!” yelled Stephen furiously. “God damn me if 
I’ll leave ye!” And at that the stone fell from her power¬ 
less hand, with the curl she had torn away. 

“Dunnot yo’ take His Name i’ vain!” she said in a hor¬ 
rified whisper. # 

“I’ll deserve as He damns me if I go,” said Stephen, 
with a heaving breast. “Didn’t I gi’ you my word before 
Him as I’d be good to my mother an’ the baby? An’ how 
can I reckon to keep it, if I ups an’ leaves ye both?’’ ? # 

“I mid ha’ remembered yon promise!” she said. 1 ak it 
back. I’ll none hold it bindin’.” 


350 The Pipers of the Market Place 

“A promise be a promise, I reckons/' said her son, look¬ 
ing at her with clear blue eyes. 

“But I’ve been a cruel, bad woman to yo’, lad!" . . . 
She said it in a small weak whisper. All the furious red 
colour had sunk out of her face, and her eyes were his 
mother’s once more. . . . 

“My mother she's nought but a Masterpiece," said 
Stephen, dirty but radiant, smeary with tears that had 
turned into mud, and with blood running into his eyes. 
He picked up the curl from the ground at her feet, and 
shook off the soil that clung to it. “Look what you done!" 
he said, showing her the hair, and the ghost of her dimple 
crept back to her cheek as she answered: 

“One less to go grey!" 

“They'll never git any the greyer for me!" said Stephen, 
looking at her lovingly, and the ice melted from Malvina’s 
heart as she opened her arms to her boy. 

She had given loyalty all her life, and had got bad faith 
for her giving. She had grown Herb Honesty in the gar¬ 
den of her soul, and tended it faithfully. 

She had suffered the mutable changes of Love, as a 
woman with a changeless nature, bound by a promise, held 
by a vow, as though chained to the living rock. 

And she had believed herself desolate, as a tree on a reef 
in.the ocean, without a heart to ring true upon hers, or a 
faith to answer her own. But she had been wrong. . . . 

The Lord was good. ... Ay! better than her deserving. 
Her own loyalty was mirrored back from the eyes of the 
traitor's son. 


THE END 























































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